


A Consequence of Loyalty

by leathansparrow



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Konoha's got 101 problems and Uchihas are almost all of them, M/M, Multi, Non-Massacre AU, This Ate My Brain, Uchiha family clusterfuck, canon-compliant AU, slowest of slow burns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-05-31 03:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 66
Words: 52,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6452965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leathansparrow/pseuds/leathansparrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a mission into Rain country, Itachi encounters a very large man in a red and black cloak who tells him: “I’ve only ever seen one person use crows as you do.”</p><p>He cannot take the man’s further advice: “turn back now, if you value your life.”</p><p>Everything changes. </p><p>*A non-massacre au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Advice in Efficiency

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written scene by scene, and thus chapters and sections will be of extremely varied lengths.  
> Thank you to one-go-alone for being a fabulous and fantastic beta.

Uzumaki Naruto has known for most of his life that his neighbors do not like him. 

They’ve never told him so, of course. They don’t really talk to him, but it’s not the distant kind of not-talking-to that you get from someone who doesn’t know you, it’s more than that, and Naruto’s an idiot, okay, but he’s not so much an idiot that he doesn’t notice.

It’s hard not to notice when it happens that much: the stares, the dark looks, the adults pulling other kids his age closer and holding back the younger ones. Thing is, it’s always been that way as far back as he can remember, and he’s never known why. He’s not sure the why really matters, ‘cause it is what it is. It’s not a big deal; he doesn’t know them, so he doesn’t care. 

He doesn’t care what any of them think, which is definitely why he’s up here at the ass-crack of dawn painting the Third Hokage’s nose red, because he doesn’t care what those assholes think. It’s perfect timing. Soon as the sun rises everyone’s gonna see the Sandaime’s big red nose right there smack in the middle of the monument.

Iruka said he shouldn’t call people assholes.

Well too bad, ‘cause that’s what they are. Nosey, staring, stupid--

“You could be doing this much more efficiently.” 

Naruto’s really, really glad he’s wearing a harness, because the sudden voice right next to him makes him draw a big old line straight across the Third Hokage’s stone cheek as he yelps, loses his grip, and flails against the ropes. 

“Excuse me, I didn’t mean to startle you.” 

There’s another person talking to him. On purpose.

Naruto peaks up under his ass. He’s hanging upside down like an idiot, so that’s about the best he can do. Watching him, head tilted curiously, is a man who looks a little familiar. Dark hair, dark eyes, that sort of pretty face the girls love. Wait, he doesn’t look that old, actually. Older than Naruto is, definitely, but he’s not Iruka-old. 

Naruto pulls himself up by one of his lines and realizes one more thing: the guy is standing sideways on the monument without ropes, as if it’s nothing. 

And okay, there’s something really, really familiar about him, but Naruto can’t quite place it. A hundred yen, he’s going to think of it ten seconds after this guy decides to make like everyone else and leave him hanging here.

But Naruto can’t help blurting out anyway: “Teach me how to do that!”

The guy looks startled. Floored really, like no one’s ever asked him something like that before, or like he’s as surprised that Naruto wants to know something from him as Naruto is that he’s here in the first place.

What Naruto does not expect, because he has no reason to expect it, is that he might say yes.

That his startled expression might soften into a very measured, but somehow genuine smile. 

That he might say: “All right.” 

That in a moment of mischief, anger, and desperation, Naruto might accidently and unintentionally make himself his very first friend.


	2. Stagnant Solitude

Since that fateful night five years ago, Uchiha Itachi’s life has been nothing but lonely and repetitious routine: 

1) He checks his mail. Sometimes, if he is lucky, it will include a summons from the Hokage. A mission, even, that would be best. Something to allow him to escape the oppressive monotony of his daily existence. If he is extremely lucky it will be a mission that takes him far from Konoha, to places unknown, where he can be of use instead of waiting, endlessly, to be so. Raven of the ANBU is so rarely active these days he has become near legend even to those who knew him. The Hokage cannot afford to offend his family needlessly now by using him too often.

2) He cooks. Simple, healthy meals that are unimpressive and make him miss his mother’s cooking more. She is only half a village away but she will not see him, and Itachi cannot fault her for that, for he carries the weight of her anger as his punishment for actions he cannot believe were wrong. There are consequences to every choice, he knows, but he did not ever consider that losing his mother’s love could be so painful.

3) He trains. In the absence of missions, training is his only real distraction. Sometimes he braves the fields where his coworkers train for the sake of pretending he shares some kind of comradery with them. For the sake of feeling as if he is still part of the whole which has rejected him, even if unconsciously. Sometimes he isolates himself to the distant training grounds where no one can see him practice jutsu so forbidden and deadly that even his own family cannot imagine them possible, for they cannot understand what he has seen and felt and bled to keep those who have survived safe. They cannot understand that his power is the result of consequences that would have damned them all, if not for the Hokage’s timely intervention. They hate him, and the Hokage, for rescuing them from themselves, and though Itachi shoulders the weight of their resentment he cannot fault them for it. They do not know what they may have lost otherwise. 

He doesn’t dare use the Uchiha training grounds. He is not welcome there. He will never be again. 

4) At four pm, he goes to the Academy and waits by the old tree across from the entrance, where he can watch the classes filling out without being the disruptive presence he knows he is. Across the open field he can see the younger children dashing out to their parents. The older ones forming groups to walk home, chattering. His brother, alone as he often is, with a moody set to his shoulders and his hands thrust deep in his pockets. 

Sometimes, just sometimes, his brother looks up as he leaves. Sometimes, their eyes meet across the distance between them, and Itachi remembers his brother’s brilliant smile, the joy in his young face whenever Itachi came home, and he can for that split second pretend he is about to see it again. 

Itachi thinks: _If only you knew what I was prepared to do to keep you safe, Sasuke. If only you knew what I would still do today to keep you safe, no matter how much you may hate me._

That smile never meets his gaze. It has not for five long and lonely years. Only a narrowing of Sasuke’s sharp eyes, a dangerous and angry warning not to come near. Itachi does not dare to come near. He has caused his brother enough heartache without adding to it now.

His very presence adds to it, but he cannot resist these moments.

He cannot deny himself seeing his little brother safe and as happy as circumstances allow him.

Sasuke is going to graduate soon. 

Very soon, Itachi’s routine is going to change. Perhaps he will not have the chance to see his brother so easily again. Life will change and cycle on as it does. There is nothing Itachi can do to stop it. 

He thinks of the bright and angry young face he met two days ago at the Hokage monument and wonders. He turns away. 

“Hey, you’re that guy.” Itachi starts, his immediate reaction to reach for a kunai in his belt. He finds himself staring into accusing blue eyes. Young Uzumaki Naruto (because of course Itachi knows who this child is) points a finger at him and asks, “were you really going to teach me how to walk up walls?”

Itachi considers. And makes a very reckless decision. “If you have the time now,” he offers.

Naruto’s face lights up as if he has never heard such words in his life.


	3. The Price of Betrayal

Itachi has imagined his father’s last words a thousand times in his head. 

He remembers the execution. Standing masked within the ranks of ANBU to the side as his father and other high ranked members of the Konoha Police Force commit ritual suicide as traitors to the village.

He remembers his father’s eyes meeting his across the field. Knowing, dreading that his father knew it was him behind the cat-faced mask he wore. He has never been able to wear that mask again. 

He remembers his father’s bleeding lips mouthing words he still desperately wishes he could hear, but they are too garbled in the throes of death for Itachi to make sense of them. Itachi thinks, he imagines, that he remembers a smile. 

His mother’s accusations haunt his dreams like poisoned barbs: _traitor, coward, Hokage’s pet. You are no son of mine_. She doesn’t know. Itachi resolves she never will know what he was ordered to do. What the Hokage saved him from doing. That rather than standing by, a silent witness as his clan was humiliated, he was languishing in restraints, convinced that everyone he loved was gone, cursing the Hokage for stopping him from sparing his little brother the massacre he believed was coming. 

At thirteen, he believed he had no other choice, not if he wished to spare his village a war. Not if he wished to spare his brother’s life. 

Perhaps allowing him to fulfill Danzo’s terrible task would have been kinder. 

Perhaps.

But perhaps the aftermath has not been as terrible as Itachi believed it would be. He has come to accept that perhaps he was misled. As intelligent as he knows he is, he was thirteen and desperate and suffering a terrible loss. 

He was vulnerable, and Shimura Danzo used that against him. 

No one will ever use such vulnerability against him again. What else can he lose now, that would be as devastating as Shisui’s death, as his mother’s hatred, and…

His brother’s.

Itachi visits the Academy whenever he can spare the time, just for a glimpse of him, and his little brother cannot even look him in the eye. When he does, it is with eyes filled with contempt.

That is his punishment for his failure. His price for Sasuke’s life. He would pay it again and worse. 

Perhaps that is why it is difficult, today, for him to sense his brother’s attention upon him and turn away, because he has promised another child his time. Time he was not able to spare Sasuke when he had the chance; he is not unaware of the irony. Who would expect he would have time for a child that no one in this village has time for, when his own brother is a child everyone does. 

A pitiable child of a traitor family, innocent only in his age and unlikely to amount to more than trouble. Itachi would help his brother bear that burden if he could. Sasuke will never let him. So instead, in his isolation, Itachi finds himself turning to a second such child. 

Uzumaki Naruto has the potential to be as dangerous as Sasuke. More so; Itachi knows what he is. Worse, knows he is too isolated for what he is. He watches his own brother’s suffering and it makes him aware of Naruto’s as well. He can’t do anything for his brother, so….

“You have little control over your chakra.”

In the training field, Naruto looks at Itachi like he’s heard that a dozen times before, unimpressed and impatient. Itachi reads his frustration easily and shakes his head. “You misunderstand.” He reaches out and remolds Naruto’s fingers, presses them gently into the right signs. “These signs help to focus our chakra, yes, but it is more like they command its flow, like directions. They don’t control the rate it is expended. You are using too much too quickly, so your chakra spills out without direction.”

Naruto frowns. “Like if you’re running too fast and you don’t see the sign quick enough, so you go running past it and get lost.”

He isn’t an idiot, Itachi thinks, smiling. Uncontrolled, under educated certainly, and perhaps the rote learning of the Academy isn’t as easy for him to grasp, but, “Yes.”

Itachi expects Naruto to understand and try again. To reform his chakra more slowly. To change.

He doesn’t. The henge still mangles itself into something incomprehensible. It’s such a simple jutsu that Itachi can’t understand where Naruto is getting it wrong. Frustration whistles between Naruto’s teeth. “I can’t do it!” he exclaims.

“Do it once more.” Wait, Itachi thinks. Activates his eyes. Wonders. 

Naruto glares at him. “I can’t do it. I can’t ever get it, so can we just move on. I thought you were going to teach me to walk up walls.”

“Wait.” The Sharingan’s ability to see chakra is not as detailed as the Byakugan’s. He cannot see its direct pathways and physical conduits. To Itachi it looks like a fire burning beneath a person’s skin, its shade just a little different, just a little unique, to every person. He can see the eddies and ripples in it, see it shift when a jutsu is performed, see it fade or spike or change. He can see the burning crimson of the Kyuubi trapped in Naruto’s gut beneath the golden lines of the Fourth Hokage’s incredible seal. Naruto’s own chakra is the same soft blue as his eyes and it flickers, agitated, against that crimson. 

It boils against it, a constant storm just beneath the surface. That spirals out and disrupts the rest. Strengthens the rest. The boy has so much chakra Itachi hardly knows how he can deal with it. If Itachi had half of what he has naturally, as a child, then….

It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t. There is something satisfying about knowing his own abilities have limitations. 

“Why are you staring at me?” Naruto asks. “What’s with your eyes. They’re all red.” He looks wary. 

“The Sharingan,” Itachi tells him. “My clan’s dojutsu.” He contemplates what he is seeing carefully. “Naruto, has anyone ever taught you how to mold your chakra directly?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, we learned that in first year.” He looks aside, humiliation burning a red blush across his cheeks. “I failed.”

“Are you aware that you have an unusual amount of chakra?”

“I….what?”

Itachi makes his decision. “Then before we move forward, I suppose we must try to help you succeed where you once failed.”

Naruto looks completely baffled, but he slowly nods his head and accepts.


	4. Irrational Jealousy

Sasuke closes the door to his family’s home and thinks he has much better things to do than let his traitor brother get inside his head again. 

“Welcome home, Sasuke.” His mother leans into the doorway, the same smile that Sasuke has seen for the past five years on her lips, and the smell of dinner wafting behind her. It’s a cold smile. Her lips and her voice are warm, but her eyes watch the doorway behind Sasuke with a careful, measured attention, as if she expects a predator is following. 

Sasuke cannot easily remember the last time his mother’s smile lit her entire face. Only that the last time he saw it, his father was still alive.

His brother was not yet a traitor to his clan. 

Sasuke didn’t need to know or care about the world and the village beyond his door. 

“I’m home.” He has practiced his own smile in the past, but forsaken it as the lie he always felt it was. His brother was the one who smiled to hide the darkness within him, and Sasuke cannot allow himself to be so dishonest. His mother does not ask what is wrong when he doesn’t return her smile, because she knows.

She respects his honesty; lies lost her one son already. So she pats his head, ruffles his hair affectionately as if he is still eight, and tells him, “Dinner will be ready by seven.”

Sasuke leans into her touch. Into the connection, into the bond they share: two survivors of betrayal. “Thanks.” 

He has homework to do. Not much; it’s pretty easy, and they’re mostly reviewing for exams these days. Graduation exams are in two weeks, and half the kids in his year… Sasuke is dreading the day he is assigned his genin team, because chances are he’s going to end up with the biggest idiot in the class.

The Hokage doesn’t have any reason to favor him with a good team after all. 

Thinking of said ‘biggest idiot’ recaptures Sasuke’s mind with images of Uzumaki Naruto: world’s loudest dumbass, flouncing up to his brother this afternoon, pointing in that stupid way he does, and yelling. His brother deserves to deal with that idiot. Maybe that’s petty, but if Sasuke has to deal with him, Itachi can suffer too. 

_His brother tilts his head. Sasuke recognizes his moment of thoughtfulness and feels a pit of dread harden in his stomach as it is followed by a gentle smile._

What the hell is Naruto doing walking off with his brother anyway? 

What the hell is Sasuke doing, caring? His brother isn’t a part of his life anymore. He gave that up when he betrayed the clan to the Hokage’s ANBU. When he helped the Hokage arrest their father. When he _let them die_.

Sasuke can’t get the image out of his head: his brother smiling the way he did five years ago, soft and a little sad, and that idiot bouncing after Itachi like he has any right. 

Naruto doesn’t have the right. Itachi isn’t….

...Sasuke’s brother anymore. 

Maybe that idiot’s just so desperate for attention that he’ll even turn to a traitor for it. Hell, maybe somehow some of his brother’s brain’ll rub off on Naruto, and then if Sasuke does end up stuck with him he won’t be so colossally stupid. 

There’s no reason for him to be jealous.


	5. Conflict of Responsibility

“Itachi, are you certain you want to take this?”

Itachi is grateful that the Sandaime has summoned him personally. ANBU missions are, for their nature, usually assigned in private, but that doesn’t make his appreciation less. The Mission Hall is an uncomfortable place. There are too many other ninjas, too many stares, too many unspoken questions he would rather avoid. 

He has been waiting for a mission for weeks. Better, this one is estimated at two, maybe three weeks out of the country. Surveillance and investigation of a group of missing nin Itachi is liminally familiar with. He has heard the name Akatsuki before. Konoha’s information on them is sketchy, based entirely upon Itachi’s own report of his encounter with a man who claimed to be Uchiha Madara five years ago, when he was preparing for Danzo’s mission. Since then the man has faded into nonexistence. Perhaps he deemed Itachi no longer of use to his plans against Konoha. Perhaps other plans distracted him. Either way, Itachi still counts himself surprised that he has never taken vengeance for Itachi’s failure to provide him the revenge he claimed to seek. Perhaps that was never his true goal. 

For now, though Itachi is the only one in Konoha with any sort of personal connection to Akatsuki. This is the sort of mission that all but guarantees Itachi will only need to fight to defend himself, and it will take him outside the village for an extended period. In that, it is ideal.

He can’t refuse it. “I’m certain, sir.” 

The Sandaime’s kind face softens. “It will mean missing your brother’s graduation.” 

Ah. “It would be a disruption for me to attend anyway.” 

“If you’re sure then…”

“I’m sure. Sir, thank you. I’ll bring back what I can.” 

He leaves the tower through the upper window, mask in place, and moves swiftly towards his home. He has a mission pack near-readiness at all times, but there are a few things he needs to add for surveillance. Thinking over his list allows him to ignore the sting he feels at the Sandaime’s words. 

It’s better if he misses his brother’s graduation. Their mother won’t stand for his presence. Even though it hurts to know he can’t be there, being gone from the village is better than wasting at home knowing he can’t attend anyway. 

Itachi’s thoughts drift, unbidden, to another child he will be disappointing. Naruto’s blinding smile pulls at him. It took him three weeks, but he’s finally made it to the top of Konoha’s tallest tree. All on his own. His control is still shaky, but it’s better. With a little practice, other jutsu should come easier to him now. 

On a whim, Itachi turns. Leaps off an electrical post. Redirects himself towards Naruto’s apartment. He can’t say goodbye to his brother, but at least….

“Ah, ‘tachi. What’cha doing here?” Naruto’s on his balcony, a cup of ramen between his knees. He pinches his face, staring up at Itachi. 

“I wanted to wish you good luck.” Itachi lands on the railing and slides down beside him. “I have a mission beginning tomorrow. Unfortunately I am likely to miss your graduation.”

“Awwww.” Naruto pouts. Childishly. Innocently.

It’s refreshing. “I’m sorry.”

“Nah.” Resignation twists the edges of the boy’s smile. “Thanks for telling me.” How many people wouldn’t have bothered, Itachi wonders? 

“It may be three weeks, but I’ll return.”

“Yeah. You’re strong, right? No one’s gonna take you down.”

“It isn’t that sort of mission, but no.” Itachi reaches out to touch Naruto. He hesitates though, moves his hand to ruffle Naruto’s hair, rather than complete the more natural gesture he wants to. A tap to his brow. Just a quick poke. A reminder, and an apology.

The memory of a similar, irritated pout tugs his heart. 

Naruto doesn’t seem to notice though. He leans into Itachi’s touch like he’s starving for it. “Don’t worry, when you get back I’ll have a hitai-ate just like yours, believe me.” 

“I don’t doubt it.” Naruto’s stubborn determination will allow for nothing less. “Are you sure you’re ready?” They’ve worked as hard as Naruto can handle. There is so much more he has to learn, but if he can keep his chakra under control, than Itachi is certain….

Naruto’s grin blazes up at him. 

“Don’t worry ‘tachi. I’ve got this.”


	6. Exam Day

Naruto does not ‘got this.’

It wasn’t that bad, the exam. Really. Easier than he expected for most of it, so maybe that’s why he got cocky. None of it, the jutsu, the chakra control, the geometry, came so easily to him before, so he’s pretty sure Itachi’s help paid off.

Until they got to the clone jutsu. 

Naruto fists a hand in his shirt, right over his heart, and curls in on himself tighter, holding the stinging cold of the wind at bay. He remembers the look on Iruka’s face. The laughter. The…. just… 

Damn it. 

“But what about--” He can walk up trees. Who cares if he can’t do a clone? Tree walking’s harder right? Isn’t it? Or is that some other stupid thing everyone but him can do, because he’s an idiot? If Iruka’d just let him show him…. 

“It’s over Naruto. I’m sorry. You failed.” Just like that. Because he couldn’t do a stupid clone. How was he supposed to know that would be on the test? He never practiced them with Itachi. 

He remembers learning them in class. He could never get them right. Couldn’t focus the image he wanted in his head right. 

_“You know he’s not trying to be mean to you, right?”_

Mizuki’s words ring in his head. 

If he’s right.... If he can just get that scroll, learn a jutsu that’ll prove to everyone he has what it takes, then… then….

It won’t be hard to get into Hokage Tower. He’s done it a thousand times before. Besides, they’re never paying enough attention to him to stop him. He can do this. 

He can fix this. 

It’s just a stupid scroll.


	7. A Not-Entirely-Unplanned Encounter

Itachi is two weeks into his mission, well across the Rain Country border, when he first encounters his target. His information beyond his personal experience is sketchy at best: pairs of powerful missing-nin cloaked in black with red clouds have been roaming about. They share the name of the organization Madara once proposed to him. They’re performing odd jobs here and there, assassinations, gathering intel, consolidating support. They seem to be building for something, though it is in too early stages for any of it to be clear.

But some of their faces are known. Deadly missing-nin from every major nation. There are rumors that Konoha’s own Orochimaru has been working with them. What Itachi has collected so far is little better than those rumors, unfortunately. He has no indication of their motives, nor a full roster of their ranks. 

The two weeks he has spent out here feel like a waste. 

It is a sense, a hint of shifting wind, the smell of salt water, that pulls at Itachi’s instincts. He immediately launches himself into the trees, safe and away as a large weapon sweeps towards his hiding place, and carefully watches the man who steps from the shadows.

He is immensely tall, cloaked in the red and black of Itachi’s target. A slashed Kirigakure hitai-ate covers his forehead. Itachi can make immediate assumptions as to his identity from a dozen other details: the enormous sword he carries, the inhuman features of one of Kirigakure’s aquatic clans. 

He is clearly one of Kiri’s ex-Swordsmen; identifying him will be as simple as a cursory glance in the bingo book when he has the opportunity. 

“Mr. Hunter,” Itachi’s adversary acknowledges politely. “I’m afraid I cannot allow you to come any closer. If you value your life, you should turn back.”

Politeness does not easily equate to his appearance, but Itachi has long since matured past mistaking looks for quality. If Akatsuki has recruited a man such as this, then Itachi’s priority is returning to Konoha with that information. It is both more and considerably less than he hoped for. 

He could have pushed further. He needs to push further. 

“I’m afraid I cannot do that,” Itachi tells the man. His mission is Akatsuki’s goals. Some hint of them. Anything to tell his village what they are planning. Identifying a single member of their number cannot prepare Konoha enough. 

“It would be impolite to ask a Hunter his name.” Itachi’s opponent drops the heavy tip of his blade to the ground. It thumps against the earth and something unsettling quivers beneath the bandages. Itachi’s eyes spin, snapping towards the tell-tale chakra glow that radiates from it. He should not let that thing touch him. “Hoshigaki Kisame,” the man offers, “though I doubt you will have the opportunity to remember it.”

Kisame takes Itachi at his stubborn word, and attacks. 

Fast.

Far faster than Itachi anticipates. 

Itachi feels the impact and disorienting snap of his clone bursting into a murder of crows above him as Kisame’s blade sucks the chakra from it and he wheels on the ball of his feet, a satisfied cackle on his lips. Elation at the possibility of a worthy adversary, perhaps. That is not a sentiment Itachi’ sympathizes with, for he finds little enjoyment in battle.

Itachi takes his opportunity to strike from behind: a series of calculated kunai trajectories that direct blades at every angle, each tied with an exploding tag for good measure, for Itachi can easily sense that any hesitation on his part will mean his death. 

He must take care regardless. An Uchiha stands out in any mission. So long as he wears the ANBU mask his identity is at risk every time he uses the Sharingan. He cannot guarantee that the other villages, or their other enemies, know there is only one Uchiha in ANBU, but he cannot risk it either.

He cannot risk draining his chakra too fast with his strongest jutsu either. 

“ _Suiton: Water Prison_.” His opponent clearly does not suffer such complications. The water prison shields Kisame from the exploding tags, which erupt pockets of steam through the clearing. Itachi dodges the super-heated spray and makes for the trees, hoping to outpace his opponent. There is no reason for him to extend this fight; he simply needs to escape. 

Kisame does not give him the chance. He bursts through the cloud of steam, dull blade slamming into Itachi’s side hard enough to crack a rib, popping his second clone and forcing Itachi to double back as Kisame throws a strike at his real body. Itachi narrowly avoids that unnatural blade, twisting from palm to toe and under, then over the next strike, using Kisame’s upper arm as a springboard to flip over his shoulder and attach an exploding tag to his neck, which lasts about ten seconds before Kisame tears it off and flicks it between them. The resounding explosion knocks Itachi back, tumbling head over heels into the bushes.

He is trembling. His limbs shake with the incredible effort of stumbling to his feet. It is immediately apparent to him that something is very, very wrong, for he shouldn’t feel so weak so suddenly, but it is as if his strength has been drained from him.

Worse, he realizes, he cannot safely activate his Sharingan’s more powerful jutsu. In a matter of moments he has been rendered without the chakra necessary to do so. 

He suspects that he cannot possibly defeat this man without them. 

He makes an immediate and painful decision in that moment of realization, as the dust and fire of the explosion clears, leaving him face to face again with his opponent. Kisame leans against his sword. He’s clearly enjoying himself; it offends something in Itachi’s most private core that this man is so amused by their confrontation. As if this is a game without severe consequences for both of them. 

Perhaps he is merely one of those who enjoys a skillful battle. Itachi does not have the time or inclination to find out. He does not have what he wants, but he has valuable information Konoha can use. He cannot selfishly leave them without it for the sake of his own pride. 

“That’s a curious technique you used earlier,” Kisame says, hefting his blade up against his shoulder. “A crow clone. I’ve only ever seen one person use crows as you do, Mr. Hunter.” He grins, feet shifting. Sharp teeth glinting. 

Ready to strike. 

“I wonder if he could tell me who you are.”

He attacks. 

A dozen yards away, fleeing for the border’s safety, Itachi feels his clone’s memories return to him, and stumbles. Catches himself against a tree and forces himself to push on. His entire consciousness reels with the possibilities. 

_I’ve only ever seen one person use crows as you do, Mr. Hunter. I wonder if he could tell me who you are._


	8. A Fool's Hope

Shisui taught him to summon crows. 

There are a variety of summons used among the Uchiha. No particular animal, save perhaps cats, has ever been favored over another. The Sharingan is the epitome of Uchiha jutsu, thus summons have always been compliments to an Uchiha’s skill rather than an integral part of it. Most never bother with such a contract. 

Shisui’s crows were passed down from his grandfather. _They’re not big or flashy or strong, but they’re really smart._ As a child, Itachi remembers his own fascination with the birds. How they flocked together, their calls, how they seemed to know friend from foe. 

How they would fearlessly defend each other, even against a stronger enemy. 

_Fitting for a ninja who lives in the shadows, right?_

Shisui always joked that he worried there was nothing he could teach Itachi. Of all the things Itachi learned from him, this contract was the one Itachi treasured most. 

He runs his fingers through Ginki’s feathers, comforted by the soft crow-calls in the trees around him as he rests, and allows Hoshigaki Kisame’s words through his head.

_I’ve only ever seen one person use crows as you do._

In that, Itachi thinks, they are the same. Shisui is the only person Itachi has ever known to create clones from crow feathers or summon them. He is the only person, because he was the one who taught Itachi to use them. 

In a fit of foolishness, in his unsettled state, he asks his feathered companion a stupid question. “Shisui cannot possibly be alive, can he?”

No. 

Itachi squeezes his eyes closed to vivid and unforgettable memories of his dearest friend’s blood running rivers down one cheek from the vicious hole where his eye should be. To a smile that still hurts as if it is cutting Itachi’s heart out with its edges. To his terrible, terrible request.

_Protect the village, and the Uchiha name._

_I couldn’t do it. I failed Shisui, the Uchiha name is nothing but a traitor’s now. I wasn’t enough._

“Where is Shisui’s eye?”

Ginki nibbles a strand of Itachi’s hair. “Miuki has it,” he chirps. 

“Where is she?”

Suddenly, even though it is never safe to, Itachi wants to see it. He needs to see it: proof that his memories are real, that the innocuous words that haunt his head are just foolishness. “Miuki!” He calls for her.

She descends from the trees like a shadow and hops onto his knee. Her eyes, both of them, are completely black. 

And Itachi feels as if his entire world has upended. 

“Miuki, where is Shisui’s eye?”

“It has been reclaimed.”


	9. Dreaming Ahead

Haruno Sakura is not impressed with her new team. First of all, what the hell? She did not work herself to the bone for top grades to get stuck with the class loser and Pretty Boy Mc.Traitor over there. Not that Uchiha Sasuke isn’t nice to look at. He is, definitely, a nice looking boy, who she would definitely have a massive crush on if his family wasn’t so creepy. If Ino doesn’t care about that, she can have him. At least Sakura gets the satisfaction of knowing she’s beat Ino at something she wants, and there’s nothing Ino can do about it. 

Suck on that. 

But that doesn’t mean her team isn’t a disaster. _Uzumaki Naruto_ is on her team. How did he even graduate? He’s an A-class idiot. Even now all he can do is bounce about the empty classroom like popcorn on a hot plate and chatter. Chatter like he’s trying to draw the entire room’s attention to him. The only people still present are her and Sasuke, so it’s not like he has much to work for. He’s always doing this, always distracting everyone, pulling pranks, getting into trouble. Doesn’t he know _no one cares?_

She’s here to learn. She’s here to meet their jounin sensei and take her first step to becoming a real ninja. She’s not here to babysit a moron. 

Even though Sasuke creeps her out, at least he’s smart. At least he’s not likely to hold her back. 

Unlike their new teacher, who is _late_. Really late. She checks the time and counts off another ten minutes from her last check and wonders if they should bother waiting anymore. 

Okay so their teacher is a jounin. Maybe they just came in off a mission. 

Naruto is trying to squeeze an eraser in the door. That’s such a stupid, petty trick. There’s no way a jounin is going to fall for it. 

“Naruto, if you get us into trouble with our sensei on the _first day_ ,” Sakura warns. She wants to hit him. 

“It’s not our fault he’s three hours late!” There he goes assuming their teacher is a man. Sakura privately hopes they get one of the jounin kunoichi. There’s so much she could learn from them. Without much expectation of help, Sakura turns to beg Sasuke’s assistance. “Will you tell him to stop?” she asks. Honestly she expects Sasuke to snap at Naruto too. It’s not like they get along. Naruto’s been in Sasuke’s face since first year. 

Instead her ‘extremely helpful’ teammate just shrugs. “If he falls for that, he deserves it.”

Just to make Sakura’s day better, their jounin sensei definitely falls for it. He’s also a guy. Damn it. 

And it just gets worse. Out on the balcony, their new sensei asks them to introduce themselves, as if he has no idea who they are. As if he hasn’t bothered to look at the student’s he’s been assigned. Mentally Sakura goes through a list of jounin names. Of course she took the time to research the potential teachers for this year. Why wouldn’t she? So she knows that her prospects of even officially making genin dropped the moment Hatake Kakashi stuck his head through the door.

He’s one of Konoha’s most elite jounin. Check in his favor.

He’s a prodigy: genin at five, chunin at six. Sure there was a war, but that’s still kind of insane. 

He’s called Copycat Kakashi because he’s the only known user of the Sharingan who isn’t from the Uchiha clan. Sakura’s research on what that means has been limited to what Academy students have access to: well known rumor and basic data scrolls only, but she’s pretty sure that’s supposed to be impressive. 

He has also never passed a genin team. In short: he’s an asshole. 

And when he asks them to tell them something about them, he’s completely useless. But fine, alright, she’s heard Naruto yell to the world what he wants to be for five years, so hearing him cheerfully proclaim that he wants to surpass the Hokage is embarrassing, but not a surprise. Ramen? Really? Hasn’t anyone taught him how to cook? He’s wants to be a ninja. He should look out for his health more. 

Kakashi turns to Sasuke next. Sakura feels overlooked, something she hates. Just because Naruto’s loud and Sasuke’s clan is important doesn’t mean he can ignore her. 

“So what do you like?”

Sasuke’s answer is non committal at best. Borderline hostile at worst. Lots of dislikes? Well, Sakura’s pretty sure she could name a few of them right now: her, Naruto, sitting here listening to this nonsense when he could be brooding about like he does best. He’s not exactly subtle about it. His ambition though…

Sakura pauses. Actually listens to him. 

“I’m going to prove we’re more than a nuisance to the village. The Uchiha aren’t just traitors, we’re a founding part of this village, and they can’t keep pushing us away. Konoha can’t keep shoving everyone who’s strong enough to scare them aside.”

There’s real anger in Sasuke’s voice. Visceral emotion, more so that Sakura has ever heard from him. Even Naruto is looking at him askance. There’s a twitch in his eye, a way his jaw sets, that Sakura sees and doesn’t take the time to comprehend, because her focus is wrapped in Sasuke’s anger. It’s magnetic, exhilarating, powerful. Here she thought he was just an emotionless asshole. 

But this is real. 

“We’re part of Konoha,” Sasuke says bitterly. “And I’m going to prove it, without betraying them like my brother did.”

Kakashi is silent. There’s a set to his one visible eye. Focused. Knowing. Mysterious. 

Sakura wants to know what is going on in his head. She has no idea what Sasuke is talking about, but she’s pretty sure Kakashi does. His brother….what?

“Wait, that’s it! Itachi’s _your_ brother.” 

The tension between them snaps. 

Given the look Sasuke is giving Naruto, Sakura is pretty sure he wants to kill him. 

Uchiha Itachi. That name sounds familiar. Of course she knows about what happened with the Uchiha clan five years ago. Anyone who’s a ninja or wants to be one should. It’s not every day Konoha has to put down a coup by one of its most famous clans. 

That’s why, she thinks, whenever she looks at Sasuke, despite his pretty face and his intelligence and his cool demeanor, she gets this little shiver of fear that trickles down her spine and warns her away. Warns her to be cautious, because the Uchiha are dangerous. Powerful. 

And not all of them are loyal to Konoha. 

Maybe in another life, she’d have fawned all over him, but Uchiha Sasuke is not a boy to take lightly. 

Itachi…. Sasuke’s brother. Wait, isn’t he the one who….

Sakura looks up and sees the expression on their new teacher’s face shift. Darken. Sharpen. Between him and Sasuke, she decides to work her facts out later, because she’s pretty sure this isn’t a safe topic. Nor an appropriate one just yet. So when Naruto tries to open his mouth to push the issue further, she punches him in the arm.

Gently. Kind of. He is supposed to be her teammate, even if he’s an idiot. She’ll let him off easy for now. “Naruto, we’re trying to start a team,” she warns him. 

“So what do you want, then.” Kakashi turns to her, smoothly grabs the opportunity she’s given him. Well good, at least her teacher isn’t a complete idiot about this.

Even if he was tardy. 

Sakura thinks her answer through, as she watches Sasuke’s dark expression fade. It gives her the shivers, looking at it. She knows Sasuke was just a kid five years ago. She remembers him in her class before and after the Uchiha Coup was put down. The way he withdrew from everyone. The way the adults started to talk about him. That first year, he’d been her primary rival. The one she was always neck-and-neck in test scores with. If she could prove she was just as smart and skilled as one of the Uchiha prodigies, no one would ever try to write her off as just a civilian kid again. Then Ino couldn’t rub her family’s jutsu in her face anymore. Oh she never did it on purpose, mostly, but when your best friend is from one of Konoha’s elite clans and doesn’t seem to try half as hard….

It gets to you. 

But then his grades started slipping. Oh he kept up. Still top five, but she noticed. It’s hard not to notice when your rival suddenly isn’t anymore. 

Until just a year or so ago, when he started catching up again. Just like that. With that look in his eyes like he’d do anything to succeed. 

He isn’t like he was before. There’s something about him that scares Sakura a little, and it’s more than knowing about his family. 

_They can’t keep pushing us away._

There’s something ominous in those words. 

But that isn’t what Kakashi has asked her. “I want to work hard,” she says instead. “I want to make jounin, and prove I can still be an elite ninja without a clan behind me. My parents are civilians. That doesn’t make me worth any less.”

Kakashi tilts his head. She has no idea what he is thinking, nor what he wants, but she thinks, maybe, she surprised him a little. 

She hopes so, because they’re going to need every little bit of help for his test. She just knows it.


	10. Test

“So, for your test.” Kakashi dangles a pair of bells in front of them. Tiny things, barely four centimeters across. They clink in the wind. “Let’s make this simple. Steal these from me. You can use anything you know how to, jutsu included.” 

“There’s only two,” Sakura points out. 

“Yep.” 

Sasuke is pretty sure this is going to be a disaster. 

Turns out he’s right to feel that way. There’s no damn way three pre-genin can steal a bell from one of Konoha’s most elite jounin. 

Seriously. They’ve tried. 

The catastrophe that is the bell test ends with Naruto tied to a stump for his excessive stupidity, Sakura shaking off a nasty genjutsu, and Sasuke sorer than he’s ever felt in his life. 

“We’ll try again after lunch.” Kakashi doesn’t look impressed. Nor optimistic. Nor...honestly all Sasuke sees is ‘sadistic asshole’ in the bright glimmer of his hidden smile. “Remember.” He points at Naruto. “He gets nothing. Give him anything, and you fail.”

Naruto groans, but it’s a resigned groan, as if he expects it. Sasuke doesn’t bother paying him any attention. If one of them can’t fight the next round then that’s that, but he’s not losing his chance just because Naruto was an idiot. 

“Hey, so…. I was thinking….”

Of course Naruto can’t just keep his mouth shut through lunch can he. Sasuke swallows, and blandly retorts: “Is the sky falling?”

“Hey!”

He feels his statement was valid, but it doesn’t stop Naruto from piping up: “So splitting up didn’t work, right? Maybe we need to try something else?”

Sakura looks up at him, skeptical but with a glint of interest. She’s actually listening to him, which Sasuke thinks is probably a waste of time, but they can’t shove food in his mouth to shut him up, so why not?

“Work together, you mean?” she clarifies. “There are only two bells. One of us is going to fail no matter what.”

“Yeah, so. At least we can make sure two of us get through right? Better than nothing.”

“I don’t think any of us are going to just accept being the one who fails.”

No, Sasuke thinks. She’s right. They’ve all got ambitions. He thinks of the possibility of failure and it drives a cold spike through his chest. He has the honor of his entire family riding on his shoulders, their chance to prove they’re not all traitors, that they can’t just be thrown away, that Konoha drove his family to their coup before, and they can’t keep treating the Uchiha like pawns to discard whenever they’re too strong or a battle is too hard.

Sakura’s been driving herself to this moment, this chance, since she entered the Academy. Aside from Shikamaru (who, asshole, aces tests he bothers to take just because he can’t not, not because he tries), she’s the only one who has ever been a rival to him academically. She’s not stupid, and she can’t afford to give up. And Naruto….

Naruto’s too much of an idiot to give up. 

So Sasuke doesn’t expect: “What if I’m the one who doesn’t take the bell?”

He stops, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. The hell? 

“Naruto, you’ll be sent back to the Academy,” Sakura reminds him. 

“Yeah, and? I almost didn’t graduate anyway. I’ll go for it again next year.” 

“You want to become _Hokage_. Do you think they’ll take a Hokage who _failed his first genin test?_ ”

“Sure, but what kind of Hokage would I be if I let one of my team take the fall for me?” Naruto grins, bright as the sun, tied to a post with grass stains streaking the bright orange of his jacket. “I’ll make it, don’t worry. I’m Konoha’s number one idiot ninja, remember. I’m too stupid to stop trying.”

Shit. 

Just. Shit.

The image of Naruto confronting his brother haunts Sasuke's mind again as it has for months, crossed with whispers in the shadows _(that’s the Uchiha boy right? Maybe it’s better if he fails. He’s too smart, they can’t fail him. But what if he....)_.

Naruto’s an idiot, but there have always been hints. Clues. Moments when Sasuke has seen more. Seen a kind of potential in Naruto that he doesn’t want to see, that makes his skin itch, and makes him feel like he’s slipping. Like Naruto’s not as far below him as he thinks he is. Sasuke may hate his traitor brother, but if Itachi took the time for him, then Naruto… There’s something more too him. 

_Konoha can’t just keep shoving aside everyone who’s strong enough to scare them._

_The Uchiha aren’t just traitors, we’re a founding part of this village. They can’t keep pushing us away._

_We’re more than a nuisance._

_The Uchiha are the most powerful clan in the world,_ Sasuke remembers his mother telling him. 

_Then why do we let them treat us this way?_

_Because even the most powerful people can’t fight alone forever._

“Take it.” Sasuke shoves his lunch in Naruto’s face. He sees Naruto’s lip quiver, his eyes water, and it’s a little pathetic. Hell, Naruto looks like he thinks it’s a miracle; has anyone given him something like this? Did he really think they’d just throw him under the bridge like that? That he could say something like that and they wouldn’t care?

He really wishes Sakura didn’t have to state the obvious: “Sasuke. Kakashi’s definitely watching us. He’ll fail you too.”

“Fine. If he’s going to fail us because we didn’t leave a teammate behind, then I don’t want him as my teacher anyway.” 

His entire purpose is to regain his clan’s honor. What kind of honor is there in letting this moron take the fall for him?

He expects Sakura to argue with him. Consumed by her ambition, he expects her to turn away or leave or something. She almost does; he sees the instinctual reaction in her fingers tightening on her chopsticks. The way her lips tighten, suppressing a retort. She’s one of the smartest kids in their class, but that’s all she is: class know-it-all, the girl who studies too much, the girl with too-few friends, because she always tells people when they’re wrong. Perfect scores on all her tests. Tears in her eyes the one time she gets marked down. There’s no way she’ll accept failing, no matter the reason. Success is the only thing holding her together. 

He doesn’t expect her to suppress what she wants to say. To consider his words in any serious way. To pick a sausage out of her lunch and hold it out to Naruto. 

“Why?” he asks her, as Naruto happily bites into it, thanking her as he chews like some heathen. 

She lifts her nose, shoulders stiff, scared, he realizes, because she knows what she has done and she’s not unaware of the consequences. “There’s no such thing as a one-person genin team.” She looks at Naruto. “Let’s make a plan.”

The air around them explode in a whirlwind, scattering food, napkins, grass, them. Sasuke tumbles to his feet, reaching for a kunai as Kakashi’s voice deafens him. “YOU!”

Everything goes absolutely still. Kakashi tilts his head and grins behind his mask. “You pass.”


	11. A Trusted Friend's Message

This is not the first time Itachi has entered his living room to find Hatake Kakashi perched on his windowsill.

“Yo!”

There are very few people Itachi has given the keys to his wards to. “Captain? Is there something you need?” Kakashi is one of them. Mostly because he has few options to trust, and because Kakashi has been a trusted coworker to him in the past, one who understands the weight of his isolation and has never judged Itachi for what he did five years ago. Kakashi is fully aware of the circumstances. 

It was him, the one who was sent to capture Itachi. To bring him in before he could complete his terrible mission. Who guarded him through the night as Itachi begged for the freedom to murder his clan. 

To save his little brother. 

Kakashi has seen Itachi at his worst already. There isn’t anyone else Itachi can afford to trust. But that does mean greetings like these are not uncommon. 

“Nah, just wanted to drop by and tell you. I’m your brother’s jounin sensei.” 

Itachi pauses in the midst of tidying his couch. He looks up at Kakashi. He’s….

Relief floods through him. That Kakashi has come to tell him. That someone he trusts will be looking out for his brother, now that he can’t. That...wait, does that mean…. “He passed your test?”

Kakashi smiles fondly behind his mask, and takes Itachi up on his offer of tea, sliding into the room and propping himself upon Itachi’s now clean couch. “Didn’t expect him to, or any of them. You know I’ve got Minato’s kid too?”

Naruto. Sasuke and Naruto are on the same team. “I assume that was organized deliberately.” Coldly, Itachi thinks. The Sharingan is one of the few things that can control the bijuu within Naruto, should it escape or run wild. Kakashi and Itachi both are the only such jounin that the Hokage would dare trust to keep track of it, and Itachi cannot be a teacher for several reasons. “Who is their third?”

“Civilian girl. Haruno Sakura. She’s smart at least. Has good control of her chakra for someone who probably never had any pre-Academy training.” Kakashi admits: “I have no idea what to do about her. Whenever your brother activates the Sharingan I can help him with it. Naruto… I can try. I can keep him out of trouble at least.”

“He needs more than that, Captain.” 

“You know you don’t have to call me that right?” Itachi shrugs. Habits die hard, even if Kakashi hasn’t been his captain in years. He likes the expression of their relationship in the title: he can trust his captain implicitly, but there is a measure of distance between them that is equally appropriate, for all they have built a strange friendship regardless. “Don’t tell me you’ve met Naruto.”

“I helped him train for graduation.”

“Damn, I knew there was something off when he walked up a tree during my test. You taught him that, but you forgot to teach him a basic clone? He almost didn’t graduate.”

“I admit I overlooked that.” Itachi’s Academy experience was, after all, unusual. 

Kakashi laughs. 

Itachi wishes he could share his friend’s mirth. But there is one more thing Kakashi needs to know, and it isn’t a laughing matter. “Sasuke has already awakened his Sharingan.” He hates to force that lightness between them to fade, but Kakashi does need to know. Indeed he understands the weight of Itachi’s meaning, when he explains. “He first activated it the day our father died.” 

“He didn’t use it during the test.” 

He should have, Itachi thinks. That’s strange. Why would Sasuke hide it? There are other Uchiha to teach him to use it. Their mother could teach him. Why hasn’t she?

Itachi wishes there was something he could do. He’s stuck, trapped, unable to reach his precious brother, unable to help him. He was unable even to hold him through the trauma of the Sharingan’s awakening, to hold back the pain of the loss that awakened it. 

He never wanted his brother to suffer that, but he has anway. It is Itachi’s fault that he has. “Captain Kakashi.” He has only one thing he can ask of his friend. “Please protect him.” Because Itachi can’t. If there is one living person Itachi can trust to care for his brother in his place then Kakashi has to be it.

Kakashi understands. “You’ve got a mission?” He nods towards the provisions stacked near Itachi’s door. 

“Yes. Surveillance and infiltration. A new group has been making themselves known near Amegakure. The Hokage wants more intel on them.” 

“ANBU?” The wards are safe enough here that Kakashi can ask, and Itachi can nod. “This is that Akatsuki group you brought us intel on before, isn’t it.”

Of course Kakashi would be privy to that information. “It is. I didn’t get enough last time.” The look Kakashi gives him says he doesn’t believe that, but what is Itachi to tell him? That this is personal now? That it isn’t just intel he seeks, but answers to a question that still haunts him? 

That he asked for this assignment for the chance of finding those answers? 

“I’ll take care of them Itachi.” Kakashi pats his shoulder. Not his head, or his hair. He knows better. There is only one person Itachi allowed that privilege, and his death is still too close for him to allow another. “Stay safe.”

“I will Captain. Thank you.”

For that, and everything.


	12. A Clue to an Impossible Mystery

His crows refuse to give him answers, and so Itachi must turn to his own skills for them. Hoshigaki Kisame’s words haunt his waking dreams as he moves through the trees. Back to the Land of Rain, and if he is more successful this time, perhaps even into the Village Hidden in the Rain. 

They aren’t particularly creative with their monikers in that country*, but Itachi supposes their weather is prominent enough to warrant the repeating title. 

His crows frustrate him. No matter how he asks, Miuki will not confirm who has taken Shisui’s eye. Ginki is as unhelpful, but in their silence Itachi finds hints of a possibility he is not ready to accept. Crows are incredibly loyal creatures. They will defend a flockmate to the death with every trick in their arsenal. Miuki’s mate Aoki was one of Shisui’s favorites. Itachi hasn’t seen, nor has had the heart to summon him since Shisui’s death, but in his desperation for answers, he does.

Aoki is as silent as the others. 

But if an outsider has harmed Miuki and stolen Shisui’s eye, why wouldn’t they tell him? 

So whoever has taken Shisui’s eye must be flock themselves. 

Itachi cannot allow himself to imagine that it might be Shisui himself. 

Amegakure is a complication. Its vast industrial underground should, in theory, make it easier to infiltrate, but it is well guarded. Itachi’s sharingan find wards and the chakra marks of traps well before he is near. A hidden village should be well guarded, so that is not unusual. What is, is that he finds no sign of Akatsuki’s presence outside of the village. 

Which means he must try to get inside. This time, fortunately, none of Akatsuki’s members encounter him before he reaches the outskirts, and those outskirts reveal their own clues. Disgusted, Itachi picks his way through an old laboratory just outside of the city’s steel walls. He doesn’t have to guess at its previous owner. Orochimaru’s signatures are rather unique. Pieces of beasts and summons and people line the walls. The operating table is clean and neat, but that doesn’t lesson the ominous presence of sharp surgical tools. 

Konoha often tries to keep track of its wayward Sannin, but he is a difficult serpent to catch. His bases have been discovered in every Great Nation and most of the minor ones, some active, some old. In this one there are no scrolls, no notes, and no active wards Itachi can see. This place has been abandoned for years. It cannot tell him whether its presence indicates Orochimaru’s involvement with Akatsuki, or if it is here by mere coincidence. 

It is a useless clue. 

But it leads to a useful one. 

Because of course he has been spotted. 

As Itachi emerges from the laboratory, he hears a familiar voice. “Hello Mr. Hunter. You’ve gotten much closer this time I see.”

Itachi’s eyes spin, reading the familiar flicker of Hoshigaki Kisame’s chakra in an instant. It’s a deeper blue than he has encountered before. Dark, perhaps, is not the best description of it. Nor is oppressive. Fathomless, like the lowest valleys of the ocean. Powerful, like the waves. Dangerous, like the predatory creatures that haunt there. 

Itachi doesn’t bother to hide his eyes this time. He cannot defeat this man without them. 

“Unsettling isn’t it?” He does like to chatter, it seems. “Our leader thought him useful, but he was never foolish enough to pair him with me.” 

“Where is your partner?” Itachi asks, sliding into a fighter’s crouch. They are close enough to the walls that Kisame could easily summon backup if necessary. Itachi’s best option is to make an opening for himself and retreat. Kisame is a difficult opponent on his own. If his mysterious partner were to join him, Itachi cannot assume an easy escape. 

“Near enough, but I would rather deal with you myself.” 

Unhelpful. Frustrated, Itachi goads him, “You said he could tell you who I was. Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Oh, I already do Mr. Hunter.” 

Itachi launches himself at Kisame, his anger overtaking reason and, for the briefest of moments, driving him to aggression. He needs to know. “Who is he?” His kunai clangs off of Kisame’s sword; Itachi regains his sense in time to avoid any real contact with it, remembering his last encounter. He springs back, relying on his superior speed to bring him to a blind spot in Kisame’s senses. There is no reason to hold himself back this time.

 _“Katon: Housenka no Jutsu.”_ Itachi redirects three of his kunai into the volley of fireballs he summons. Kisame meets them with a water jutsu of his own. As before, steam erupts between them, clouding their field of battle, but this time Itachi’s sharingan can pick out Kisame’s chakra in the mist, and he wastes no time using it to his advantage.

Of course it seems his opponent can sense chakra as well. Itachi makes it to the treeline before: _“Suiton: Bakusui Shouha.”_ The force of the wave nearly rips Itachi off of his feet. By now, with a technique this flashy, someone from Amegakure has certainly seen their battle, and Itachi can no longer afford to waste his time.

And Kisame, borne by that wave, is _fast_. Dubiously balanced on the water, Itachi leaps for the safer height of the trees, but is thrown back by a forceful sweep of Kisame’s sword.

Or he would be. His clone explodes into a chorus of black feathers. Itachi drops from a branch above and risks his chance to meet Kisame’s eyes as he lands. 

Kisame closes his in the instant Itachi tries to activate his genjutsu. Leaving him only one real choice. 

_“Amaterasu.”_

Black flames flare to life, circling him, burning the rush of water away. Itachi feels a weight upon his chest; the chakra drain of that jutsu is dangerous. His right eye blurs slightly at the edges from the strain. He can feel a wetness at the corner of his eye. At best he can afford to use it twice, maybe three times if he pushes himself. Maybe more if he has no other choice. 

He cannot afford to pull punches with Kisame, especially if Kisame is accustomed to fighting sharingan users. He must be; why else would he close his eyes as if expecting a genjutsu? Fortunately Kisame seems to recognize the danger of amaterasu, and backs off. He tests a basic water jutsu on it, which steams and does nothing to douse the flames. “That is a dangerous jutsu you have. Had you used it on me rather than to protect yourself, I would be in trouble.”

What is he suggesting, that Itachi is holding back? “If you won’t tell me, let me pass then.” 

“Oh?” Kisame hefts his sword over his shoulder. He doesn’t attempt to use it to cancel Itachi’s jutsu; apparently he can sense that would be ineffective. Thus they are at an impasse: Itachi within amaterasu’s protective flames, and Kisame beyond them, unable to pass without risk. He seems, if anything, disappointed. “It isn’t satisfying to fight a strong opponent who has no desire to fight.” 

That is… uncomfortably astute of him.

He still wants, needs, to know. Desperately.

There are whistles signalling from the walls.

“I need to know, Hoshigaki. Who is your partner.” 

Kisame grins over the flames. “Perhaps next time you can prove to me you seek him honestly, Mr. Hunter, and then maybe I’ll tell you. But this time, if you want to escape, you are running out of chances.” 

And Konoha needs to know that Orochimaru was involved with these people. Itachi cannot afford to be captured or killed here. So, reluctantly, he takes his window of escape, leaving the answers he craves behind him.

As he runs, Itachi closes his eyes and puts amaterasu’s flames out. And despises himself for fleeing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *As far as I can tell, the country Amegakure is in doesn't have an official name. Someone please correct me on this if that's not the case.


	13. Preparations

It is as Itachi is leaving for his third attempt to infiltrate Amegakure that Kakashi approaches him about a new development in his brother’s life.

Kakashi’s inconsistent updates are a blessing. For the past five years, Itachi has had only what brief glimpses of his brother he can snatch for reference, sympathetic whispers from his teacher, and very little substantial news of his well being. Now that he is Kakashi’s student, Itachi knows more about his brother’s personal life than he has since the Coup. 

“How are they getting along?” he asks, when Kakashi infiltrates his window as he packs. 

“Heading out again? It’s not like you to have this much trouble.” 

“They’re particularly frustrating, unfortunately.” Itachi doesn’t voice his further worries. Akatsuki. He has had no indication that Uchiha Madara is still involved with the organization. Despite his warning to the Hokage of his encounter with his relative years ago, he has yet to see any sign of him, only evidence of those Akatsuki has recruited in the meantime. Their motive still remains a frustrating mystery so long as they are consolidating their power in Amegakure. It it’s entirely possible that their plans are in such beginning stages that there isn’t much to find yet beyond the mind of their leader. 

Only a fool would reveal his intentions too early. 

Thus Itachi’s only choice is to continue seeking answers. Perhaps in finding them he will also answer the question burning through his mind. 

_Who is your partner?_

Did Uchiha Madara contract himself with crows as well? Is that the rogue Uchiha Kisame is paired with? That seems too simple. 

If it is that simple, then perhaps his inevitable encounter with that man will come sooner than he thinks. That would at least settle the more disturbing possibilities that will not leave Itachi’s imagination at peace. 

“Well, they haven’t killed each other yet.” Itachi snorts. That isn’t a promising response. “Nah,” Kakashi waves Itachi’s unimpressed expression off. “You know Naruto’s been showing off the tree walking trick you taught him. It took Sakura under an hour to master.” 

That, Itachi has reason to be impressed with. There aren’t many genin save perhaps himself and the man invading his personal space who might have picked that technique up so quickly. 

“Sasuke?”

“Naruto dared him to a race up Hokage Mountain. Sasuke finally beat him by moonrise.” 

He should have learned it faster than that. Itachi knows his brother’s potential. “He didn’t use his sharingan.”

Kakashi grimaces. “Haven’t seen it yet. You’re sure it’s active?”

Is it possible Sasuke hasn’t been able to activate it since that night? Itachi can’t imagine why, unless….

Perhaps the memories of their father’s execution are just too much. He can’t fault his brother for that. Pain and loss, a traumatic experience of the worst kind. Those are what give the Sharingan life. An eye that reflects a kaleidoscope of tragedy. If there is another way to activate the Sharingan, then Itachi has never experienced it. That his family must be forced over and over again to experience such pain in order to achieve their greatest power is a curse that has haunted them for generations. 

Generations built upon hatred, fury, and grief. Of course they would armor themselves in pride and the imagined heroism of their sacrifices. 

But that has only ever led them to further misfortune.

“Hey, cheer up Itachi. By the time we get back, maybe I’ll have them walking on water, since you’ve got them a head start already. Speaking of, I came to tell you.” Get back? Itachi stares at Kakashi, perplexed. “We’ve got a mission out of town. C-rank escort.”

Escort, outside the village? Part of Itachi is proud, happy for his brother, that his team has earned that. Part of him is terrified. So many things could go wrong. 

But his brother is a shinobi, and Itachi cannot hold him back with his fears. Sasuke needs to learn and grow on his own, and Kakashi will be with them. So, “Good for them,” he says. 

Kakashi reads him too well. “We’ll be fine, Itachi. It’ll be good for them. Be back before you even.”

That may be true. “Keep them safe Captain.” 

“You know I will.”


	14. A Persistent Mystery

To his credit, Kisame’s nuisance of a Hunter is persistent. Though his mask is meaningless now, at their third meeting, Kisame can in a way respect his propriety in continuing to use it. Though it is meant to mask his identity, it serves a secondary purpose: it proves his loyalty remains to his own village and what kind of mission he considers this. 

Or, what kind of mission he did consider this. 

This time his opponent has made it through Amegakure’s wards. Frustratingly, Pein doesn’t care much whether a single Konoha shinobi slips into his city, so long as he faces his due retribution for it. Madara continues to play his foolish games in the shadows, pretending he isn’t the mastermind behind their organization, as he moves his own pieces into place. Kisame suspects even Pein, Nagato, doesn’t know him as anything but a shadowy advisor. More likely he doesn’t care. 

According to his partner, Uchiha Itachi is a seventeen-year-old prodigy, even by his famous clan’s standards. He can’t tell Kisame much about what he might have learned in the past five years, but he can warn him of Itachi’s particular talents for genjutsu and shuriken jutsu. And warn him of his eyes.

Kisame already knew about those. Itachi’s abilities don’t seem to be that similar to his partner’s, but they’re formidable none the less. Apparently an Uchiha with the Mangekyou Sharingan is, for the most part, unique.

This particular Uchiha is unique. A little annoying in his persistance. But….

 _Kisame, fight him if you want, but I don’t care what Pein says. I don’t care what’s between us. If you kill Itachi, I’ll kill you._

His partner’s interest in this young man is strange. 

Fascinating. 

Makes Kisame want to know more about him. It is rare to see that kind of personal loyalty between shinobi. 

“Hello Mr. Hunter.”

Itachi is waiting for him on an electrical pole. No doubt he sensed Kisame coming. He doesn’t speak this time, but his hand twitches to his mask, his other to his knives, and Kisame knows he is deciding whether to risk revealing himself so he can fully utilize his abilities, or to keep his masquerade intact. 

It’s a little annoying to feel he is being underestimated, but after their last encounter Kisame suspects that if Itachi were not holding back his skills for the sake of his identity, Kisame might not have survived that one. That fire jutsu he used, if he has other abilities of similar caliber then Kisame can only hope he has a limited capacity to use them. Or to get Samehada close before he can. It’s a rare feeling, the instinct that he is outclassed.

Kisame learned long ago to listen to his instincts. 

“Mr. Hoshigaki.” Polite. Clipped. Ready for him. “Did you choose to come after me alone on purpose, or is your partner trying to avoid me?”

Still seeking Kisame’s partner. He doesn’t even attempt pretense this time. He hasn’t been poking around Amegakure’s stores, or trying to sneak into its vaults. He’s been flitting about the city searching….

_Don’t you dare tell him I’m here._

Well there’s little reason to lie. “For now I assume the latter, though he told me something interesting about you Mr. Hunter.” Kisame enjoys the way his opponent stiffens, reading his threat. The heady thrill of danger in the air goads Kisame. He wants to see his Hunter unmasked, to fight him with his full potential unleashed. 

That isn’t likely to happen here in Amegakure. Pein would have his head, for one, and his Hunter has already shown himself to prefer retreat over battle. But he still wants to see. 

“Uchiha Itachi, won’t you put your mask aside so we may meet face to face?”

The Hunter doesn’t answer. Very slowly, he reaches for his mask. A crow’s caw breaks the silent patter of rain around them as one of the creatures lands on his shoulder.

His partner’s crows get like that too, defensive. They’re no good in combat, but they’re tricky little creatures. 

Itachi pushes his mask aside. His scarlet eyes meet Kisame’s. 

“That was foolish of you.” 

Kisame spins, finds a knife at his throat and his opponent behind him. Upon the post, Itachi’s body bursts into a flock of crows. They wheel through a reddening sky, their caws deafening. The rain has stopped.

Kisame laughs. “He didn’t say you’re better at genjutsu than he is.” 

“I wouldn’t know.”

There’s little point in trying to fight Itachi within a genjutsu for real, but unless this is a type Kisame is unfamiliar with, he should be able to defeat this illusion of his Hunter here and break through. Flaring his chakra is no good; the illusion is too powerful for that. 

He swings Samehada as he turns and his opponent vanishes. 

Fast. But not fast enough. Itachi may be a faster genjutsu user than his partner, but he is not physically faster, and Kisame has been sparring with his partner for years. He leaps after Itachi, chasing him across gutters and rooftops and puddles that reflect the scarlet sky above them. Itachi moves like a dancer, graceful and quick and always just a centimeter out of reach. The pinpoint accuracy of his kunai throws are admirable and just difficult enough to track to keep Kisame on his toes. 

With every sweep of Samehada, Kisame eats a little bit of Itachi’s chakra away. Bleeds a little of the genjutsu’s power dry. That’s all a difficult genjutsu like this is, a battle in the mind meant to distract or exhaust an opponent into submission, but fortunately the user is usually as focused upon it as the victim is trapped in it. 

So Kisame can have his battle, regardless of its location. And within an illusion there is no reason for him to hold back for the sake of Amegakure’s infrastructure. 

He summons his ocean, summons his sharks, guards himself from Itachi’s fire jutsu, and falls into his enjoyment of the chase, the challenge his Hunter presents. A graceful speed very different from his partner’s, less aggressive but equally deadly. Trickier, even. Itachi always seems to be a step ahead of him, always with a counter to Kisame’s techniques. 

Much to Kisame’s dismay, the time comes to end their little game. With his final strike he activates Samehada’s full absorbing effects, and banishes Itachi’s shadow from his mind. 

Unsurprisingly, when the genjutsu breaks, Itachi is gone.

But at least this time he has seen his opponent’s face.


	15. Beyond a Closed Door

Hoshigaki’s partner is an Uchiha. As Itachi flees for Konoha, that fact plays through his mind on endless loop. Worse, the way Kisame talked suggests someone who knew him personally, but who? The number of Uchiha he has had personal contact with in the past five years can be counted on one hand. The number who know him well enough to be able to identify him solely from his summons and his preference for genjutsu are greater but…

Itachi doesn’t even know where to begin. 

There is someone who knew all of those things, but he is dead. Five years dead. 

_It has been reclaimed._

But someone has Shisui’s eye. Someone the crows trust. Someone they won’t reveal to him. A relation of Shisui’s, perhaps? Could someone extract his memories from his eye? Is that even possible?

With Orochimaru involved, Itachi fears the realms of twisted possibility are almost infinite. 

He makes it back to Konoha exhausted, frustrated, and with more questions than answers. His report to the Hokage is clipped, and offers irritatingly little new news. 

“I think it is safe to say Amegakure is their headquarters. Which means they’re part of a legitimate government, not just a rogue organization.” 

The Hokage nods graciously, accepting Itachi’s report. “You encountered this Hoshigaki character again?”

“Unfortunately he has identified me. If I continue this investigation, it would be better to do so officially.”

“Perhaps.”

Itachi understands the Hokage’s hesitation. An official mission against Amegakure could cause a very real political mess between their nations. Fire and Rain are not on good terms. But if Amegakure is run by an organization of missing-nin, then it is possible the other Kages would agree to it. If it were framed correctly.

He knows his Hokage has no interest in starting a war. 

“Has he identified you to his superiors?”

“I don’t know.” 

“Then we will maintain your mission as is. Until Amegakure issues an official request to desist, we will assume your identity hasn’t been fully compromised.” 

“Very well.” 

At least he can continue his investigation. He has another chance to identify Kisame’s mysterious partner. 

The mystery of it is driving him mad. 

“Itachi, you should stop by the hospital.” Itachi jerks. The hospital? “Your brother returned from a mission yesterday.” Cold dread fills Itachi’s heart. “He is stable, but he was injured. I thought you should know.”

Itachi flees towards the hospital as soon as propriety allows him to, without any thought to the consequences. Sasuke. Kakashi mentioned a mission to Wave Country before Itachi left for his last mission, but it was C-ranked escort. Nothing a genin couldn’t handle.

He remembers, too long ago, another such mission and the terrible consequences of it. His teammates blood in the air. The man in the one-eyed mask. The loss of his friend.

He only manages to discard his mask and his vest before he arrives at the hospital, his tattoo still recklessly bared and parts of his armor still intact. He doesn’t bother with reception, just targets the familiar prickly feel of his brother’s chakra and moves towards it. 

The door is cracked open. He can hear voices inside, so he turns the handle.

And is frozen by his mother’s icy gaze. 

She presses her hand over his on door handle. Says in a clipped, uncompromising voice, “This is family time.”

And pushes Itachi out of the room. 

Itachi’s heart stutters beneath a sudden, stabbing pain. Emotion though he knows it is, it doubles him over in his shock, in the peak of his adrenaline. His hand presses to the door as he slides to his knees, suddenly gasping for air as if he’s held his breath though his entire run. 

His little brother is just on the other side of this door. And he can’t see him. 

“‘Tachi?” 

A warm, curious voice breaks his panic. Itachi looks up. “Hey, you okay?” Naruto leans over him. Flush with life, warmth, uninjured so far as Itachi can see. It gives him the momentary stability necessary to gather himself and pull himself to his feet. 

“Naruto. I heard about your mission.” 

“Oh. Right.” Something dark flickers across Naruto’s face. “Guess you were…. Your mom’s pretty scary, isn’t she.” Before Itachi can answer, Naruto pulls on his hand. “Come on. She kicked us all out, but you can still see him from here.”

He leads Itachi to the roof, just above his brother’s room, and he’s right. With a pair of mirrors between them and a little creative maneuvering, Itachi can see his brother just fine. Sasuke is pale. Bandages wrap his arms and throat. He’s smiling at their mother though, letting her card her fingers through his hair and hug him. He’s talking. 

He’s safe. 

“Can you tell me what happened?” Itachi asks Naruto. 

“Well,” Naruto grants him. “Guess you can already tell it wasn’t your average C-ranked mission.”

That, given Naruto’s story, proves to be a gross understatement. Itachi listens to Naruto’s tale, his heart in his throat as Naruto imaginatively describes their encounter with Momochi Zabuza and his protege, opponents far beyond a genin’s level. One of the former Seven Swordsmen of Mist, no less. Itachi wonders whether Kisame knew him, and what he would think of this tale.

The tragedy of this tale. It seeps into Naruto’s voice, the needlessness of their deaths, the burning desire in Naruto’s heart to _not let this happen again_. Itachi finds himself in sympathetic mourning with him for their purposeless loss. 

He’s wondering what a man he has fought three times would think. There has to be something wrong with that. 

Naruto tells Itachi of Sasuke’s injuries. Of Kakashi’s. Kakashi too? He’ll have to drop by. Kakashi being injured or exhausted on a mission isn’t particularly unusual (the exhaustion part at least), but he’s an absolute terror once he’s awake. Several books. That might keep him still for a few days. 

“You already know about… it. Don’t you.” 

The creature sealed within Naruto. That its power was drawn out during this mission, that’s a terrifying thing to contemplate. That it was in defense of his brother… Itachi feels some strange sense of pride in that. “Yes. Those of us old enough to remember were sworn to secrecy.” 

“Did you know when you were helping me before?”

“Yes.” 

“Huh.” 

Naruto kicks his feet over the roof’s edge. “Hey, you really love him don’t you.” Itachi looks at Naruto, not entirely processing his meaning, until Naruto clarifies: “Sasuke, your brother.” He laughs. “Hah that’s. That’s good. That he has someone like you looking out for him. He needs it you know, ‘cause he… I couldn’t… he was trying to protect me and he got hurt and it was bad but...”

“I would do anything to protect him,” Itachi tells Naruto quietly. Honestly. Too honestly, but it’s the truth. He would do anything to keep his brother safe. Even stay away from him, if that’s what he needs. No matter how hard it is. 

“You know, we’re a pretty good team, him and me.” Naruto grins. “Sakura too, I think. She will be. I know this time was bad, but…. So just so you know, we’re looking out for him too.”

 _I want to protect him too_ , Itachi hears.

Itachi breathes in the warmth of the boy’s smile, the relief, the promise in his words. He closes his eyes and accepts. “Thank you.” 

At least one of his precious people has friends to carry him. 

\-------

“Mom, who was that?” Sasuke can’t see the figure his mother pushes from the room. He is too tired to sense the familiar flicker of chakra behind the door. 

His mother turns back to him. Her smile changes. 

Sasuke rubs his eyes, and leans into her touch as she returns to his side. By the time he opens them again, the false cheer in her eyes is gone.

“Just one of your teammates,” she says. 

Oh. Okay then. He’ll see them in the morning.


	16. Challenge

Kakashi is definitely not drunk enough for this bullshit. 

Point one: Umino Iruka. Who any other day of the week, Kakashi would rile up just for fun, because he’s a devastatingly attractive man when angry. Currently, he’s the kind of angry Kakashi can’t enjoy because it’s the kind of angry people get over their family’s safety, and that’s too real, too dangerous, and too vicious for Kakashi to find it amusing.

Point two: His team can _do this_. They’re young, yes, but they’re good. They have the potential to be good. Holding them back is only going to hurt them, and more importantly none of them can afford to be held back. Yes, Konoha’s no longer at war, but his kids are ambitious. They’re desperate to prove themselves. After their last mission, they need a victory to prove to themselves that they can reach their goals. Two of them have been left dangerously isolated by the village for too long. One could become that, if she is pushed too far. This is a risky opportunity to bind them together so completely that they will never feel that loneliness again. 

Point three: the completely furious vision in black and red stalking towards him from the izakaya’s door with hellfire in his eyes. Okay, so yeah, Itachi has every reason to be completely pissed at Kakashi for doing this. Sasuke is his little brother, and he has a seriously unhealthy obsession with him. But did Iruka (who is scowling from the doorframe with daggers in his eyes) have to tell him before Kakashi could? 

That’s just mean. 

Itachi is usually polite. He is usually calm. Today he brings his hands down on the table hard enough to make the glasses on it jump. The izakaya’s patrons freeze around them. Drama at three o’clock, and Kakashi’s in the center of it. Great.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing.” Itachi bites it out in a clipped, vicious hiss. 

Kakashi meets his very, very red eyes. “Giving them what they need.”

“That’s my little brother, Kakashi.” He drops the ‘Captain’ for once, which Kakashi privately mourns in this circumstance. “If anything happens to him I swear….”

“Itachi, take a seat. Iruka?” Kakashi waves him over. Itachi’s fists clench against the table. For a moment Kakashi swears the tomoe of his sharingan sharpen. “Hey. You’re worrying people.”

Kakashi would not usually care about that, but Itachi would. And better, the distraction works. Itachi glances over his shoulder. Takes in the collection of faces staring back at him. Bites his lip. Glares at Kakashi, and then folds himself into the seat across from him. Iruka joins them, sliding in at Itachi’s side. “He has the right to know,” Iruka defends.

Seriously Kakashi doesn't even care why now. Itachi is already here and looks like he wants to kill him, no matter the reason. 

“Explain,” Itachi demands. “Why are you recommending my brother’s team for the Chunin Exams?”

Shit this means Kakashi’s going to have to give him a serious answer. Unlike Iruka, who Kakashi enjoys riling up, Itachi is slow to anger, and very slow to forget. And he is more than capable of killing Kakashi in his sleep.

More seriously, Sasuke is the most important person in Itachi’s life, and Kakashi knows that intimately. Better than just about anyone. It would be a breach of everything they’ve built between them, the trust and mutual respect, to play with Itachi’s emotions here.

That also means Iruka is going to get to witness the great Hatake Kakashi being honest for a change. He’ll have to do something later to make him forget this. “They can handle it, Itachi.”

“They’re not even a year out of the Academy,” Itachi protests. “Even I waited three years--” 

Kakashi interrupts him. “You heard what happened in Wave?” Itachi grits his teeth. “They’re smart, and they’re good, and they _care about each other_. They work together.”

Kakashi hesitates before delivering his final blow. Something he knows Itachi, and Iruka, both need to hear. “Do you understand how _important_ that is for the three of them?”

Iruka looks at Kakashi as if he’s seen a ghost. A phantom. Perhaps a memory, even, because he casts that gaze away with something dark lingering at the corners. “Naruto’s never had friends he can trust.” 

“Neither…” Itachi’s temper stills. His eyes fade to black. “Neither has Sasuke.”

Kakashi takes a long, satisfying drink. He needs another. Desperately. Several more. “Do you see what I’m doing here?”

Iruka is not so quick to accept, but Itachi understands. They’ve known each other too long for Itachi to misunderstand Kakashi’s intentions. Rather than acknowledge this in words, he steals Kakashi’s drink from him and downs the last of it. “My threat stands.”

That’s good enough for now.


	17. Indecision

Itachi finds himself torn between resuming his ongoing mission and delaying it for the sake of lingering in Konoha until the exams are done. Every thought of his little brother’s team in any number of scenarios drives him to distraction. Worse, the longer he delays, the worse the question in his mind burns. 

_Who is your partner?_

But this is his brother’s wellbeing in jeopardy.

“I realize this is a breach of protocol, but I would like to request access to the Chunin Exam records for this year.” Itachi finally goes to the Hokage. With more information he hopes he can settle the fears eating away at him long enough to return to his duties. Or at least keep him from being distracted during them. 

The Sandaime is an understanding man. More importantly he understands both Itachi’s circumstances and the relative importance of his mission. “The exams are classified, however…. Will it allow you to continue your mission during them?” He doesn’t ask whether he can trust Itachi to be discreet. Itachi has more than proved himself capable of that. 

“I believe so sir.” 

The first exam is simple: an inverted intelligence gathering task, capped with a test of courage. It’s well rounded. Any genin capable of even just standing their ground should pass it. With Morino Ibiki proctoring, it will scare the living shit out of any genin incapable of facing the second challenge. 

Kakashi is right, his team can handle this. Even Naruto, whose academic and intelligence gathering skills are notably poor, can handle this. So long as he can stand firm to the end, he’ll be fine.

Sasuke will breeze this without a hitch. If Kakashi’s hints are correct, so will their teammate Sakura. As long as they can trust Naruto’s determination. If they can’t, they aren’t ready for the next round anyway.

The second round is the Forest of Death, but the location isn’t what makes Itachi nervous, it’s the potential conflict with other teams. The necessary random element that will test their real-world ability to handle a mission’s unexpected challenges.

There is nothing that can settle his fears for this one. He looks at the rosters the Sandaime has allowed him to see. They’re incomplete. Registration is ongoing until the day of the first exam, so there’s no telling who might still enter. No one on the list looks immediately suspicious. 

There are other first year teams on the list. If he didn’t know better he’d wonder whether Asuma and Kurenai somehow goaded Kakashi into his decision. Given their friendship, it isn’t completely out of the question, but Kakashi isn’t the type to take such bait.

“You’re leaving again?” Naruto finds Itachi on the roof of his apartment, just as he is finishing his preparations. Itachi meant to say goodbye to him personally, but the pull of his mission that wars with the anxiety he is leaving behind has already driven him to too much distraction. “Did you hear what we’re doing?”

The boy is excited. 

Itachi pauses his preparations and gives into his fears for the briefest of moments. Tugs Naruto into a hug and ruffles his hair. “Stay strong,” he tells him. “Believe in your teammates and yourself. Don’t let any of them tell you that you cannot win.”

Stay safe. Keep my brother safe, please. 

“‘Tachi you’re squeezing too hard.” Itachi pulls back, embarrassed by his recklessness. Naruto grins up at him. Adjusts his hitai-ate. “We can do this, don’t worry. I’ll keep them safe.” 

Itachi has so many doubts, but he doesn’t doubt that Naruto will do his best. “I will try to return before the third exam. I can’t guarantee it, but…” 

“You want me to say something to Sasuke?”

Itachi freezes. 

So, so many things. Too many things. 

“He wouldn’t believe it, if it came from me.” So Itachi hesitates, but…. 

Naruto’s smile urges him on. “Tell him I believe in him.”

He resolves to return as soon as he can.


	18. Ghost

Itachi’s mission, this time, does not go so simply. Despite his fears, it is not thoughts of his brother’s exam that drive him to distraction. It is not the driving urge to return home to see him through it, nor any reckless haste on his part that complicates things. 

This time Hoshigaki Kisame is not alone.

“Hey cousin. Fancy meeting you here.”

Itachi’s eyes meet a scarlet match. A familiar face. A waking vision of nearly all of his nightmares for the past five years. That hallucination smiles with a crooked glimmer of mirth that is too familiar, too painful, as if it is reaching into his heart and twisting what remains of it apart. 

For once in his life, Itachi lets his rage, his emotion, his heart, overcome him.

“How dare you wear his face.” His words are a whisper, but they deafen him. The sound of his own heart pounding deafens him. Blood bleeds rivers down his cheeks; he cannot control his eyes. Spots of black flame beg for his command.

“Wow, Itachi hey it’s really me.” The phantom waves his hands with an awkward grin.

“He’s dead. He isn’t you.” He wants to burn this vision of his worst nightmare away with the deepest flames of hell. Tear its presence from his mind as if it’s a sickness. 

“It’s me Itachi.” That too-familiar voice gentles. A terrible kindness. 

Itachi’s throat burns with the fire he is holding back. Why is he holding it back? It burns with the pain of the truth he knows and cannot forget. “No.” Itachi raises his voice. “Uchiha Shisui is dead. I killed him myself.”

Shisui has always been too fast for Itachi to easily keep up with, no matter his five years of training since they last met. Within a heartbeat Shisui’s ghost has him, hands tight against his arms, holding him still.

Itachi could shake free, he should shake free, this is an enemy, an imposter it…. 

…can’t….. 

Lips press against his forehead. Genjutsu rarely duplicates smell, and though there are minor differences, Shisui smells the same. 

…..it can’t be…. 

Shisui is…..

“No,” Itachi’s voice breaks. He can’t breathe, as if his very life has been sucked from his lungs. “No you can’t be….” He has never felt so weak.

He cannot fight this illusion, so let it be the death of him if his enemy means for that. If an enemy of Konoha knows this weakness of his, then how can he be useful to them? He cannot let this weakness survive. 

He cannot let this man wear Shisui’s face.

So let them burn together. 

_“Amaterasu.”_

“Shit, Itachi. _Kai!_ ”

Itachi is swept from the hellstorm he calls, from the illusion he fears, into a much more terrifying reality. Kisame’s sword is pressed against his side, draining his chakra to a flicker. He couldn’t summon amaterasu if he wanted to. His hands are bound; he has let his enemy capture him with barely a fight.

The man wearing Shisui’s face is crouched in front of him and he looks at a loss. 

He looks different than Itachi remembers. That is the most terrifying thing. The thing that makes his illusion so dangerously believable. One of his eyes is sewn shut and sealed with old scars, the other shows thin but healed marks beneath. He is older, as he should be. His face is thinner, showing the wear of the road and the life of a missing nin. 

His smile is the same. It’s painfully, terribly accurate. So much so that Itachi cannot look at it without the horror of his nightmares coming alive in his mind. 

Kisame, at least, Itachi knows is real. No genjutsu artist could mimic the abilities of his sword, and Kisame would never let someone take it from him. “Mr. Hoshigaki, please tell your partner that if he doesn’t dispel his genjutsu I will find a way to kill him, bound or not.” 

Kisame hefts his sword onto his shoulder; its damage is done and Itachi can barely find the strength to move, let alone escape them. 

“Mr. Hunter, this _is_ Uchiha Shisui.”

Though their meetings have been infrequent and almost exclusively battles, Itachi knows that Kisame is not lying to him. Knows it well enough to know that it doesn’t matter that Itachi is his enemy. He will not lie. Tease him, yes. Play with him… but their last meeting, asking an ANBU to unmask himself for the sake of truth between them….

But that cannot…. “I killed you.” It doesn’t matter the circumstance. It doesn’t matter that Shisui asked him to take that final step, to help him disappear, fade into the shadows, be the nameless guardian who tried and failed to save their clan. That memory, even after five years, is still too close and too painful. Itachi’s ultimate failure to save someone he loved beyond measure will haunt him for the rest of his life. 

His failure to fulfil Shisui’s one last request will haunt him beyond that. 

“Ah, Itachi.” Shisui reaches out to him, towards the ponytail hanging limp against his shoulder, but he hesitates before completing a gesture Itachi has experienced a thousand times and never thought he would again. “Guess I shouldn’t do that anymore, should I?”

Part of Itachi wants him to. Just to feel that again; it used to annoy him in the most superficial sense but it’s… it’s so Shisui. It’s him. It really is. He isn’t…. “How are you alive?” _Why did you never come for me? How did you survive? I lost you._

_I lost you, and it broke me._

He is a prisoner of the most deadly enemies he has ever faced, and yet he can only care about this. 

“I have so much to tell you Itachi.” 

“Shisui,” Kisame warns. 

Shisui grins at him. Familiarly. How long have they known each other? 

“He’s _that_ Itachi, Kisame.”

“Do as you like then.”

Then Shisui’s hand is framing Itachi’s face, warm and real and alive. “Don’t fight me on this, kay?” His one eye spins to sharp-edged points. Itachi would like to say he doesn’t fight it because he doesn’t have the strength to. 

_Forgive me little brother._

The fact is, it’s the truth.


	19. A Conflict of Convictions

“I know what the Hokage asked you to do.” 

Itachi wakes somewhere underground. It isn’t a cavern. The walls are brick and mortar, and there is no dripping sound to indicate disrepair. It is the temperature that gives their relative elevation away: it is cool in a way only underground spaces are, crisp and unmoving, as if that temperature has never changed. 

This must be an Akatsuki safehouse. Possibly even in Amegakure. Itachi is grateful his captors allow him to pull himself up from the available cot without restraining him. There are supplies organized along the walls. The container codes are not Konoha standard, nor standard code from any of the other Great Nations. There is as much weaponry as food, and the standard stack of scrolls and tools. There seem to be an unusual number of scrolls and a much reduced quantity of ninja tools, actually, which makes sense. The safe house of an organization of missing nin likely makes do with what can be afforded to it. 

Kisame leans against the wall near the door, and for some reason Itachi finds his presence comforting rather than threatening. Perhaps because he knows who and what Kisame is, and there are no illusions in his intentions, nor is there any history between them that would complicate those intentions. Kisame does offer him a polite nod, and a greeting. “There isn’t any need to keep secrets, Mr. Itachi. I am aware of Shisui’s story.” He stands. “But I will give you two time to catch up.”

A foolish part of Itachi wants to ask him not to go. In this insanity, Kisame is the only point that makes sense. Without him present, he has nothing to focus on but the impossible person before him.

And so Itachi is drawn to the core of his current predicament. Shisui sits on a cot opposite him, one leg propped against his other knee. His hand in his chin. Watching Itachi like he’s been waiting a lifetime.

They both have been, it seems. 

“The Hokage?” Itachi asks, because Shisui’s words confuse him. Perhaps because he has just woken from a genjutsu, albeit a minor one unlikely to leave side effects. Had he been pitted against anyone else, Itachi is certain he wouldn’t have even been captured by it. 

“To stop your father, in the end. An… an ally told me. After I woke up. It was already too late to stop it.” 

There is something incorrect in Shisui’s assumption, but Itachi doesn’t yet have enough pieces of Shisui’s story to fit together exactly where it has gone wrong, so he asks instead: “How did you survive?”

“I did really mean to die there, you know.” Itachi swallows back a stinging prickle in the back of his throat. “I remember hitting the river and then…. It was awhile later. Wasn’t sure how long, really. Someone who knows about the kinds of things Danzo and the Hokage were doing, they found me, and it was awhile before I could do much. Didn’t even have my eye. Took awhile before I was strong enough to summon Miuki.” 

That very same eye, the one that Itachi received from Shisui and gave into Miuki’s protection in the first place, stares back at Itachi, and Itachi cannot help but feel the weight of accusation in it. He couldn’t even protect his dearest friend’s last gift. In the end it was stolen from him, and he didn’t even notice. Is there any way in which he didn’t fail Shisui?

“Hey, Itachi.” Shisui slides off the cot and towards him. Crouches in front of him and boldly lifts his chin, forcing Itachi to meet his eye. It is the last thing Itachi wants, seeing the mirror of everything that has gone wrong reflected in that eye. “Hey, you… you tried everything. I know you did. It was too big for both of us. And what he asked you to do….that.”

“Asked me?”

“The Hokage. Ordered you to kill our clan.”

No. Itachi shakes his head free of Shisui’s grip. “He didn’t. Shimura Danzo did.”

“The Hokage sanctioned it. Ordered you to kill everyone, and they’d let Sasuke live right? A neat solution: every Uchiha that could be a threat gone, even you. No chance they could try again. Threat neutralized. At your hands.”

Itachi feels his hands trembling in his lap as he remembers those orders. Remembers Danzo’s promise. Remembers his certainty that there was no other choice. They were going to die. All of them. Him too, that was certain. But if there was a single chance that Sasuke might survive. That the one last person Itachi cared for above all others would be safe, then…

They’d already taken Shisui from him. 

The village would survive. Stability maintained. No war. At the price of his family’s blood on his hands. 

Sasuke would survive. 

And perhaps he would never know his father’s shame. 

Shisui tugs on his hair, drawing him back to reality. To the twist in the truth Shisui is telling him. To…. “The Hokage intervened before I was able to go through with it,” Itachi bites out. “ANBU arrested the ringleaders.”

Shisui shakes his head. “No, that’s not right.”

“Shisui, I was _there_.” Banging at the bars of his cell in Hokage Tower, for there was no place safer to keep him, begging them to let him go. To let him complete his mission. _To make sure his little brother was safe_.

Shisui smiles at him. “Itachi the Hokage will do it again. When someone challenges him too much. Konoha isn’t the village I thought I was protecting. Come with us; I can make sure no one ever asks you to do something like that again.”

So that is Shisui’s purpose. 

Itachi closes his eyes. 

“And your partner?”

“Kisame’s loyal to Akatsuki. Always has been. But he knows, Itachi. The lies Konoha’s told. What they’ve done. He knows I’m loyal to you.”

“Do you know all of what Akatsuki is planning? Does he?”

“Me, I know enough. Him? Probably more. He’s been here since the beginning.”

Itachi feels a kiss against his cheek. “Sleep, Itachi. Samehada’s nasty. You’re not in danger from us. You know I will never betray you.” 

_Then why did you ask me to kill you?_ Because Itachi cannot give Shisui an answer to his false claims, he chooses to pretend to sleep. 

He doesn’t know what to think.

\-------

Kisame pushes himself away from the wall outside his partner’s room. What Konoha has done. What have they done, really, he wonders? There are discrepancies in his partner’s story. Facts that don’t match what his Hunter has told them. Hints that remind him that even in Akatsuki he can’t escape the stain of lies. The puppet-strings manipulating him, using him. He thinks he knows what Madara wants, but does he really?

Madara. How many except him even know who the mastermind behind all of this is? Shisui thinks he knows, but….

Kisame has contemplated the price he pays for loyalty before. This moment isn’t any more comfortable than those past. 

It seems, if Itachi is correct, that Konoha’s Hokage has already done something the Mizukage or that their leader never would.

He held back. 

He risked war for the sake of preventing this young man from committing the same crimes Kisame has. He refused to ask him to ruin himself for loyalty. 

If Konoha has leaders willing to protect their own, then why has Madara lied to Shisui about it? Has he or is Itachi the delusional one? Which are the lies?

They have two days before they are expected back at headquarters. Itachi should be strong enough to make his own way by tomorrow. Kisame has no illusions that Shisui will allow his cousin to be taken with them against his will. Equally it is clear that Itachi’s loyalties are still to Konoha. He won’t come willingly. 

Perhaps he shouldn’t. 

Either way, Kisame means to pick apart the lies ensnaring him again, whether or not his partner is willing to accept them. And there is no better place to start with than the top.


	20. Time and Priority

Itachi listens to his captors voices outside the door as he pretends to sleep and it is in those whispers he learns more than four failed missions have told him.

“Shisui, do you believe your cousin is a liar?” The smooth, polite, but firm care with which Kisame cuts through Shisui’s rambling excitement speaks of years of familiarity. It hurts a little bit, as Itachi listens, to realize just how long they’ve worked together. Long enough that there is a measure of trust between them, despite their differences. 

Despite Shisui warning him that Kisame is loyal to Akatsuki, Shisui trusts Kisame enough to say, “No. Not to me.”

“Then you cannot believe he is lying to you.” 

“I can believe he’s been misled. That the Hokage lied to him.” 

“But you can believe the story Madara told you is more honest?”

Shisui shifts. Itachi can hear him pacing. “Why are you doing this Kisame? You’ve been with him the longest. You’ve met Itachi four times and you don’t know Konoha. Why believe him?”

“Madara manipulates pawns to do what he needs. You’re right, I don’t know your cousin, but I know Madara. Your stories don’t match; I would rather investigate myself than assume which one is false.”

Itachi hears the tension in Kisame’s voice. This bothers him, he realizes. The discrepancy between their stories. Between Madara… Uchiha Madara is here. He is still involved with Akatsuki. That man in the mask, who beckoned Itachi to come here when he thought he would have no other choice. The man who _murdered his genin teammate_. (Itachi was not unaware of the connection when he turned to that man in his desperation.) Instead he recruited Shisui; is that how Shisui survived? If Itachi had completed Danzo’s task and gone to him, would he have seen Shisui again?

Despite the terrible cost, part of Itachi despairs at the lost opportunity. To see his precious friend again. To know he was alive. But what would have become of them? What would have become of Sasuke?

“What do you plan to do with your cousin?” Kisame asked. Resigned. As if he knows what answer to expect. 

“I won’t force him to join us.”

“By now he knows too much.”

“If you touch him _I will kill you_.”

Kisame laughs. “I should,” he admits. “But what he can hear right now won’t harm our plans. Besides.” It is Kisame who cracks the door between them open and peaks through. Itachi doesn’t bother with pretense. They already know he’s listening. They aren’t fools, at least, so Itachi looks up at him. Meets his small, amused eyes calmly. “I would rather face you awake then kill you in your sleep.”

An honest man amongst murderers. 

Worse, an honest man amongst shinobi. Itachi suppresses his amusement.

Kisame has the audacity to wink at him. Shisui’s curly-haired head pokes through the door. That grin. Itachi has dreamed of his smile for five long and lonely years. To see it alive and real again tugs a painful longing in him.

More so, the resigned, but playful expression on his face. “You should be sleeping. Seriously, Samehada’s chakra drain isn’t something you want to mess with.” Indeed Itachi still feels exhausted, but the opportunity…. “‘Course you can’t miss an opportunity to eavesdrop on us.” 

Well… yes. 

Itachi turns over on his cot and props himself up. He finds Shisui beside him, a hand on his face, thumb under his cheek, just beneath his eye, and that knowing smile…. He has missed this so, so much. So much that despite the fact that they are, in essence, enemies now, Itachi leans into his touch. 

Despite five years apart he still trusts Shisui with his life, no matter the consequences. 

No matter who Shisui has become. 

_I will never betray you._

“I did something awful to you, didn’t I.” In a deep state of emotion, it is difficult for Itachi to control his eyes. So of course when he opens them, it is the Mangekyou that stares back at Shisui: proof of the price they’ve paid between them. The consequence of Shisui’s death. “I thought it might work, that it might give you a chance, but….”

“It wasn’t enough,” Itachi confesses. _I failed you._

“The Hokage….” 

“Sent Hatake Kakashi to restrain me before I could go through with Danzo’s orders. ANBU arrested my father and the ringleaders in the police force. They were sentenced to execution, but chose ritual suicide.” 

“That isn’t what I was told. The Hokage ordered our clan murdered by your hand.” 

Then he was told a lie, Itachi thinks. “Then why didn’t I succeed?” 

Itachi’s eyes flick up to Kisame, who is watching the pair of them silently. Thoughtfully. Loyal he might be, but Itachi doesn’t think he is mindlessly so. There is a measure of wary intelligence about him that Itachi would not recognize were he the type to follow orders without question. 

Shisui’s eyes are only for Itachi. “That isn’t what I would have wanted you know. Everyone dead.” So even if he had succeeded, Itachi still would have failed, is that what that means? “You having to do that. Especially you. I know you would have succeeded, of course you would but….”

Shisui stills. His one eye narrows. “Of course you would have succeeded.”

Itachi knows it is better to let him contemplate that himself. Shisui knows him too well. Knows his loyalty to Konoha, knows he…. He drives the last nail home: “ _Danzo_ promised me Sasuke’s safety in return.”

Upon Itachi’s face, Shisui’s hand tightens. It isn’t painful; Shisui would not hurt him, but it reveals the conflict in him. More so when Shisui pulls away and stands. “I need a walk.” He looks at Kisame, who shrugs, wordlessly replying to whatever question Shisui has silently asked him. To keep guard, perhaps? “Besides if that snake fucker is actually going after the exams, we need to get moving. He’ll want us to keep an eye on that mess.”

Snake fucker? Exams?

Shisui closes the door behind him, leaving Itachi in Kisame’s watchful care. Snake…

A chill freezes Itachi’s blood. 

“It’ll be another day before Samehada’s effects wear off fully,” Kisame informs him. “We’ll leave you somewhere out of both of our hairs. Shisui’s right, you should sleep.”

If Orochimaru is going after the Chunin Exams, then Sasuke is in danger. 

“I’m sorry,” Itachi says, genuinely, as he meets Kisame’s eyes. “ _Tsukiyomi._ ”

He doesn’t have time to sleep. 

\-------

Kisame wades through a sea of bones and fears and lies, wrapped in the impenetrable power of Itachi’s genjutsu. There is no figure to fight this time. No way to break its complete entrapment of his consciousness. It terrifies Kisame on an instinctual level, that he has no power here, that Itachi’s conscious will could show him anything, do anything to him. 

As a weapon, this genjutsu would be devastating, but it seems that despite being enemies, his Hunter felt no desire to harm him. 

Instead Kisame is a passive witness to the terror that drove his Hunter to entrap him like this. To the conflict in his heart. To familiar scarlet eyes that watch him with accusations that do not exist, imaginations of blood across moonlit streets, and a serpent’s whispers in the dark. Kisame can only conclude that what brought his Hunter to attack him like this is a very unusually unnerving circumstance for him. 

Itachi does not seem the type to be so sloppy in creating his illusionary worlds. 

So what, then, could drive him to such emotional distraction?

Intrigued, Kisame waits, watches, and wonders.


	21. Let the Games Begin

Sakura bites her cheek through Naruto’s final match against Hyuuga Neji, silently cheering her idiot teammate on as the crowd heckles and jeers around her. She doesn’t dwell on her jealousy, that he’s made it to this round and she hasn’t. Her match against Ino was fine; she knows where she went wrong and what she needs to learn. 

Combat skills have never been her strongest point, and to get through to chunin, apparently they need to be better. Next time she’ll know. Next time she’ll be ready.

Hopefully next time Naruto won’t be there with her, because he’s going to wipe that arrogant smirk off Neji’s face for what he’s done to Hinata. Sakura may not know their classmate well, but that was too far. 

No matter his awful circumstances.

Sasuke slides in beside her, just as the match finishes. He looks exhausted. Between Kakashi’s training and the curse mark wreaking havoc with his chakra, he’s had a pretty rough week. They all have, but Sakura doesn’t have a match coming up in an hour. 

“Are you going to be alright?” she whispers to him. 

He nods. But his eyes are on Naruto clocking Neji’s chin into the air. A smile quirks his lips through the sudden silence of the crowd, and the subsequent, shocked cheers. Sakura lets herself get caught up in them, cheering her teammate on from the stands, proud that he’s proved to all of them, everyone, that he’s not just the idiot everyone thinks he is. 

That she once thought he was. 

He’s well beyond proved her wrong. 

“Hey good luck,” Sakura tells Sasuke, when he stands to leave. There’s still a couple matches between his and that Gaara guy’s, but Sakura doesn’t blame him for not wanting to stay with the crowd. “You can handle him.”

“Yeah.” Sasuke pauses, looks back at where Naruto is whooping from the ground. Then he leaves with that same confident smile on his lips, and if Sakura’s right, half of that smile is Naruto’s victory.

The rest is his own.


	22. Chaos

Sasuke has known all along that the opportunity he has in the Chunin Exams is much greater than a rise in rank. This is the first time an Uchiha has participated in the exams in five years. There were never many genin in his clan to begin with, and those few that were during the coup mostly didn’t get anywhere after. It isn’t just his own pride at stake, but that of his entire clan. If he wins here, in a fair match against Sunagakure’s craziest genin… better, if he can then prove himself a powerful, trustworthy ally as a chunin, then he can begin to make actual progress towards his ultimate goal. 

He can show the Hokage here and now that the Uchiha cannot be ignored, will not be ignored, and are not the monsters the village has made them into. 

It isn’t his pride alone at stake though. Part of him wants to beat Gaara to prove himself. Part of him wants to do it because that look in Gaara’s eyes unsettles him. There’s something wrong about him, something that edges the corners of Sasuke’s mind. That rage echoes something deep in Sasuke’s head, calls to him, frightens him because he senses a kinship in it.

That he could be like that, given other circumstances. That the right push could send him over that edge, into a hatred so deep he could never climb out of it. Not without destroying everything he cares for.

The way Gaara all but destroyed Lee. No… worse.

He has to strike Gaara hard and fast. Kakashi’s Chidori should give him the firepower necessary to break that sand barrier. He’s only chased Naruto around half the village to make sure he has the speed to execute it. Between the sharingan and Sakura’s help focusing his chakra, he has three shots. Three good shots, then he’s on a dangerous chakra burn that might force him to avoid using the sharingan at all. So, hard and fast. 

He’s glad Naruto’s already won this match, because otherwise he was going to have to hassle the shit out of him for wasting his opportunity with Jiraya. How is it, exactly, that Naruto seems to just run into people willing to help him out? 

He can worry about that later. As he makes his way to the entry point, his mother finds him. She stops and hugs him, and whispers “I’m proud of you,” in his ear.

_Of course, you’re my son after all._

What he would have given to hear those words from his father; his mother has given them to him in his stead, and she knows it. The meaning of those words between them glitter in her dark eyes. She knows how much her love and respect mean to him. 

He will have that, and Konoha’s both. 

He can’t lose. Gaara’s powerful, insane, but he’s a genin too. And he’s probably so confident of his sand skin that he hasn’t spent half the time preparing for this match that Sasuke has. 

He can do this. 

Or he could do this, if Gaara didn’t turn out to be possessed by some crazed monster. Or if his match didn’t turn into a colossal clusterfuck. The unnerving arm that bursts from Gaara’s sand barrier isn’t half of Sasuke’s problem. The sudden appearance of several dozen armed, hostile Sand ninja? That’s definitely the bigger problem.

Half the stadium is asleep. Sasuke hears yelling. It’s a moment’s distraction to push the genjustu falling over him away with the sharingan; it’s not that powerful. Armed ninja sweep in, some with Sound hitai-ate rather than Sand. He can’t reach his teammates from the ground easily, and he trusts Sakura to have Naruto and anyone else helpful out of that genjutsu as fast as she can. He almost goes to them.

Then Gaara’s siblings drop from above to collect their rage-mad brother and flee. 

His match is ruined anyway. Recklessly he launches himself after Gaara’s retreating siblings, ignoring his terror at that creature’s mad screech. There are jounin in the stands who can handle this better than he can, but if he can catch Gaara, deal with him, then at least he can stop whatever their part in this plan is. 

Plus, they’re the Kazekage’s children right? They might be useful. 

He feels the familiar flicker of Naruto’s chakra following after him and presses on, knowing he won’t be alone.

Temari, Gaara’s sister, is good, but she’s tired from her match and she’s too desperate to think clearly. Sasuke doesn’t waste his time on her, just enough to make sure she’s too worn to follow. Shino’s unexpected help with Kanukro is appreciated. He finally manages to run Gaara down two miles outside of the village.

He is not prepared for Gaara’s retaliation. The monster he becomes is like something out of a nightmare. A beast of sand and blood and madness. It’s fast, and it’s too strong. Sasuke knows his chances against it alone are miniscule but he fights anyway.

If this is what they meant to unleash on Konoha then…. 

Sasuke dodges a blow strong enough to rip the top of a tree off its trunk. Pushes harder, finds every hint of movement with his sharingan and tries to herd Gaara back towards Konoha and the stronger ninja fighting there. He reaches for his chakra as the seal on his curse flares and pulses, pain spiking a vicious stab down his spine. 

He doesn’t have a choice, if the monster in Gaara can’t be stopped here….

He activates Chidori in a desperate strike. 

And is whipped into a tree for is troubles. As Gaara’s monstrous hand raises, as his shrieking laughter echoes through the clearing, Sasuke pushes himself up, hands flying through Chidori’s signs.

A bright orange blur launches itself out of the forest and punches Gaara square in the jaw as another, red and pink, lands in front of him, kunai drawn. Sakura looks back at him and breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh good your curse isn’t active.”

Like hell Sasuke would let it be! “What the hell took you so long?” 

Naruto lands beside her, pointing. “Oi, first of all, who the hell is that?” 

Sasuke’s pretty sure he should hit him for being a dunce but--

“Die Uchiha Sasuke!” Gaara launches himself at the three of them and Sasuke has no time to do anything but react. He pushes Naruto aside, wraps an arm around Sakura as he activates his last chidori and feels Gaara hit. Feels the force of his lightening tear through Gaara’s monstrous arm as Sasuke is thrown, tumbling, through the trees. Sakura shrieks. She turns him over the moment they land, because Sasuke is too shaky to do anything but collapse.

His curse flares. He screams, and he can hear Naruto yelling. His vision blurs through the pain. The monster is still there, screaming his rage to the sky as Sakura stands between them. Holds her ground between them. 

“Sakura!” 

He doesn’t have the strength to protect her. Or Naruto.

Naruto, who is standing there, listening. Dumbass why doesn’t he attack! Sasuke can’t hear Gaara’s mutterings clearly. He hasn’t paid attention, hasn’t bothered to listen to the madness of a monster but Naruto. “Naruto take him out!”

The look Naruto gives him is….

....Sasuke doesn’t know what it is. 

He can do nothing but watch as Gaara turns his madness on Naruto. As the monster that is his skin grows and mutates and bubbles and screams. As Naruto summons dozens upon dozens of clones to hold him back, that endless energy of his their only remaining weapon against this creature. They fight rage versus pity, madness versus hope. Sasuke has only had time to worry for his own growth, his own power as he prepares for his match, but Naruto....

 _I guess he wasn’t just playing around._

Gaara unleashes the full power of his rage upon Naruto, curses him, taunts him. Then worse… turns back to them with a sadist’s grin. 

“Love is a lie. So let me break it for you.” 

Sasuke can see Sakura clinging to a tree branch above him, terrified of the terrifying creature they face, unable to move.

With the last of his strength he leaps for her, tries to pull her out of the way of Gaara’s attack but he can’t....

“ _Susanoo._ ”

Scarlet light rips through the trees around them, a maelstrom of power that burns and solidifies. Forms itself into an enormous ribcage guarding them from Gaara’s attack. Sasuke feels its awesome power in his bones so completely it’s like a punch in the gut. 

His brother rises in front of them at its center. His raven-faced ANBU mask is askew. His clothing is covered in road-dirt and dust. His legs tremble with the effort of keeping himself standing.

His brother is here. Sasuke can’t believe it. “Itachi what--”

Itachi turns to him, panting, smiling. “I’m glad I made it in time.” 

There is something wrong with his sharingan. Something terrifyingly, horribly wrong. They shouldn’t look like that, like the knife-edges of a shuriken’s blades, spinning lazily in the red. 

Beyond the monster Itachi has summoned to protect them, Gaara screams. Pounds at its scarlet chakra until Itachi staggers. Shit there’s more wrong with his brother than his eyes, Sasuke realizes. He can work out why Itachi is here later, for now they need to deal with that....

Gaara’s sand-covered tail sharpens to a knifepoint and strikes at Itachi’s summon. One of its bones crack. Itachi doubles over, coughing. A horrible wet cough that tears through his lungs.

“Oi!” Outside their barrier, upon a higher branch, Naruto stares down at Gaara, rage in his eyes. “Get away from my friends.”

And summons a monster of his own.


	23. In Pieces

The aftermath of Sunagakure’s attack is… it’s…. 

Naruto sits slumped at his friend’s bedside in the hospital and tries to push away too many thoughts racing through his head. Witnessing another so like him consumed by the helpless rage of his isolation… how’s he supposed to deal with that.

How’s he supposed to deal with knowing he’s not the only one, and that some of his kind have been treated worse? How’s he supposed to look into that mirror of himself and not be moved? 

Sakura nudges him. She’s asked him if he wants to talk about it already. Yeah sure, I’ve got a monster in me too, let’s talk about that. It’ll be all fun and laughs. Let’s talk about how the Sandaime’s dead and Sasuke’s cursed and Itachi’s lying in a hospital bed and won’t wake up. 

That’s why Naruto’s here. Itachi’s a motionless, fragile lump in the bed next to him with a mask over his face, and every time the doctor comes to check on him, every time Naruto asks, he gets this pitying look. That ‘sorry kid you don’t want to know’ look that Naruto hates. 

“Sasuke coming?” he asks her. Sasuke should be here, not him. Itachi’s his brother right?

But Naruto’s not an idiot. He kind of knows Sasuke and his brother don’t get along. 

“He said he’d try to make it down later,” is what Sakura tells him. Better than nothing, Naruto thinks. Maybe he really will. “They’re testing his seal again.” Okay maybe not so maybe, if that’s why he’s not here. Naruto can wait. 

He’s got nowhere else to be. 

Itachi wakes before Sasuke arrives. Sakura is beating Naruto handily at cards when a soft cough fills the pseudo-silence between them. Itachi’s hand moves first for the respirator, not pulling but feeling it out. His eyes, when he blinks them open, are hazy but sharpen quickly.

“I’ll get the nurse,” Sakura offers. Naruto thanks her, and turns as Itachi tries to gingerly sit himself up. 

He can, carefully, but it’s a painstakingly slow process. Naruto doesn’t stop him when he tries to remove the mask. “It’s good to see you safe Naruto.” His voice sounds like a frog kicked it in. Naruto would know. He’s recently become pretty familiar with them. 

“‘Tachi, you okay? What happened? What was that thing you summoned? Are you--” Itachi raises a hand to his lips to suppress a cough. Naruto snaps his mouth shut. Stupid. He’s been awake less than a minute and here Naruto is pestering him with questions. 

And he really doesn’t look good. 

The nurse sweeps in, Sakura following at his heels, with a clipboard in hand. “Mr. Uchiha, how are you feeling?” he asks without sparing a glance for Naruto. 

Itachi swallows with some difficulty and replies, “This appears to be more serious than my last chakra drain.”

The nurse stops. Looks at Naruto with this dismissive anger in his eyes, like he’s offended by Naruto’s presence. Asshole. Naruto knows that look. As Sakura hovers at his shoulder, he knows what the nurse is about to say. “This is a private matter.” At least he pretends to be polite about it. “If you aren’t family, you need to leave.”

Naruto is not leaving. End of story. 

The nurse looks like he’s about to argue. 

“It’s alright.” 

Sasuke stands awkwardly in the door, hovering, looking as if he’s unsure if he should enter. “I’m his brother. They can stay.” 

The nurse looks dubiously at Itachi, who has stunned eyes only for his brother as he nods absently. “Please,” he rasps.

They let them stay.


	24. Repercussions

Itachi expects some reprisal for his reckless flight across half of Fire Country after having his chakra sucked dry by Kisame’s Samehada. He expects worse after pushing himself to summon susanoo of all things in the end.

He does not expect this. 

“It’s in early stages, but we double checked the scans. You--” 

He’s not just exhausted. Apparently, he’s quite ill. 

“In a way you’re lucky,” the doctor who comes in moments later informs him. “If you hadn’t run yourself to exhaustion, your symptoms might not have shown this aggressively for months. Maybe even years. At this point we can repair the acute damage you’ve caused yourself. With treatment we may be able to force this into remission.”

But there’s no cure. Or at least no medic in Konoha capable of curing him. 

“If you want see your twentieth birthday, you’re going to have to retire.”

His brother and his team are silent through the prognosis. Sasuke watches him with horrified eyes not unlike those Itachi remembers seeing the night Sasuke was told what Itachi did to their clan. That he was responsible for their father’s death. Whatever he may have wanted to say is lost in the knowledge that Itachi is dying. 

Funny. Itachi doesn’t know how to feel about that. Sasuke shouldn’t care whether he dies. That he is here at all isn’t something Itachi is entirely ready to process in itself. He was not surprised by Naruto’s presence. He would never have hoped for Sasuke’s. 

His second thought is immediate denial. He’s only just found Shisui again; to be forbidden from seeking him out because his own body is failing him is unacceptable. Worse, being forbidden from missions at all. Becoming useless to Konoha, after everything, he can’t….

“Unfortunately I’m not sure even Tsunade-hime could cure this.”

Itachi, not two weeks past his eighteenth birthday, finds himself between a hopeless choice: to accept an early death, or become helpless. 

To leave everything he is behind. 

He doesn’t know how not to be a shinobi. 

“There’s got to be a way,” Naruto exclaims. “This Tsunade, if we find her then maybe….”

The doctor shakes their head. “Like I said, she may be the most skilled medic-nin in the world, but I’m not sure she could handle this.” 

Naruto’s eyes burn at the thought of even a hopeless chance. “Naruto.” Itachi quietly mourns for his compassion. He doesn’t deserve it. “Don’t.”

“You’re just giving up?” Angry, indignant, Sasuke’s eyes spin red. “How can you!”

“Hey,” the doctor snaps. “Your brother needs to rest. If you’re going to yell, then get out.”

Privately, Itachi is glad when they do. It gives him time to deal with his own mind.


	25. A Change of Priorities

“I know that name,” Sakura tells them as they leave the hospital. Are forced out, really, because Itachi does actually need to rest. “Senju Tsunade, called Tsunade-hime. She’s a famous healer, or she was. She’s….” Sasuke feels like he’s being accused of something, the way she looks at him. “She’s one of the three Sannin.” 

Like… 

Sasuke’s hand nervously finds his shoulder. The curse is inactive, safely contained by Kakashi’s seal, but he still feels like it’s crawling beneath his skin. Lurking. Waiting. 

It’s power. 

It’s a temptation.

_I’m glad I made it in time_. Sasuke remembers the incredible power of Itachi’s summon and he thinks….

He doesn’t want Orochimaru’s power. He needs to redeem his own clan. Find the power within his own eyes. Orochimaru’s curse feels like a cheat, for all its promises. How can he redeem the Uchiha with another man’s power? 

“Wait, hang on.” Naruto rubs his head. Knocks the heel of his hands against his forehead like he’s trying to remember something. “That pervert Jiraiya said something about her. She’s the first Hokage’s granddaughter or something. There was something else…. Something about finding her or--”

In Sasuke’s mind, the image of his brother lying convalescent in a hospital bed, weak and fragile, staring at him as if his presence is as impossible as Sasuke feels it is, runs on repeat. Why did he go, he wonders? Was it because he feels indebted to his brother for rescuing them? Was it the need for closure? Watching his brother’s monstrous guardian fade, his powerful, dangerous, duplicitous brother collapse as it does in the wake of that terrifying battle of giants, Sasuke can’t help but think: _I’ve never seen him so weak_. 

He sees in an instant the true glory of his brother’s power, and watches him fall, and he can’t get it out of his head. He’s spent five years hating Itachi for what he did to their family but…. 

In that one moment he looked just like the brother Sasuke remembers, the one who loved him and held him and left.

Find Senju Tsunade. 

Sasuke focuses on that one chance. That one hope. A chance for answers he realizes he needs and can’t get from anywhere else. If his brother dies, how will he reconcile the brother he once loved with the man who betrayed him? So he tells his teammates: “Then let’s go talk to your weirdo teacher.”


	26. Bearer of Bad News

“Hey. My team’s gone and tossed me out as a teacher for a field trip with Jiraiya, so I’ve got nothing better to do than bug you. How’s it going Mr. Invalid.” 

Jiraiya? The Sannin? What else has Itachi missed in the past three weeks? “You’re letting them out without you?”

Kakashi shrugs and leans himself against the windowsill. “They’re in the hands of one of the most powerful men in the world, and Naruto just took down another jinchuriki on his own. If Jiraiya can’t handle three genin like mine, he doesn’t deserve his title. Besides… Naruto’s kind of attached to him.”

That seems reckless, but Itachi can deny neither Jiraiya’s reputation, nor that his brother’s team has rapidly improved. Even he would hesitate to challenge the Sannin unless absolutely necessary. He hopes that Sasuke isn’t doing something foolish, following him around. 

“I assume there’s something else you wanted to tell me, Captain.” 

Kakashi never comes by for a simple purpose after all. “Let me remind you before you try to genjutsu me or burn me to death,” because of course Kakashi knows about those particular skills of his, “you’re in a hospital and on mandatory bed rest.”

“That has rarely stopped you.” But Kakashi’s warning does give Itachi pause. He takes the scroll Kakashi gives him with trepidation, and unrolls it. Unbidden, his eyes spin red. 

Orochimaru.

“ _And you let him leave the village?_ ”

Kakashi holds his hands up in defense. “He’s in the hands of the best seal master in the world. If anyone can help your brother deal with this, Jiraiya has years more experience than I do and he specializes in it. Better, he knows how Orochimaru works. And if something goes wrong, Sasuke will be safely outside the village where his team can help him without anyone asking questions.”   
Itachi hates it when Kakashi is being reasonable. More so when Kakashi has already thought his seemingly reckless actions out, leaving Itachi no room to contradict him. 

No logical room. His fear for his brother demands he question Kakashi’s motives regardless. 

So, “Why Sasuke? Orochimaru has no ties to him.” Or to Itachi, barring brief encounters in his youth. 

“Convenient target, probably,” Kakashi muses. “Or it’s possible another Uchiha has pissed him off recently.” 

Itachi thinks of Kisame’s hints. Orochimaru’s connection with Akatsuki. _He was never foolish enough to pair him with me._

Was. Past tense. And Akatsuki played no noticeable part in Orochimaru’s recent attack on Konoha. If Orochimaru had to rely on an alliance with Sunagakure for that, then it is unlikely he maintains any connection to them. There are two Uchiha connected to Akatsuki. Is it possible Madara did something Orochimaru would seek revenge over?

Is it possible Shisui did? 

“Oh, and one more thing. The Elder Council’s looking into the next candidate for Hokage.” Because the Sandaime is dead. Itachi shudders. His Hokage was an understanding man. A man who wanted peace, who was willing to fight for peace, and willing to stay his hand when he needed to. There is no guarantee his successor will do the same.

“Any hints yet of who they’re considering?”

“Well, they’ve got a couple options pending, but one of them you’re not going to like.” Itachi feels his stomach drop. “One of them’s Shimura Danzo.”


	27. Detour

“He’s right you know. It’s early, but Konoha’s a mess right now. If we’re going to grab the Kyuubi’s jinchuriki it’s perfect.”

Shisui doesn’t sound convincing when he says it, but Kisame feels adrenaline race through him regardless. Capturing a jinchuriki. They’re supposed to be years from that stage; he knows Madara is rushing. But the opportunity is too good. Shisui’s told Kisame what he knows of the vessel: young, probably a genin by now, but no indication he’s activated his bijuu’s power yet. Vulnerable.

With his protectors stretched thin... 

Their orders are simple: infiltrate Konoha and capture the Nine Tailed Fox’s child vessel alive. Make it out clean. Leave as little indication of their presence as possible. 

Kisame thinks Madara’s a fool to send him on any mission that is supposed to involve discretion, but he also knows why they have this assignment. Shisui is intimately familiar with Konoha. Kisame is unquestioningly loyal.

He’s supposed to be unquestioning.

_Why did Madara lie to Shisui about Itachi’s fate?_

Logically he knows the answer. If Madara did indeed lie it was to manipulate Shisui’s loyalty. Why else would he? That isn’t the question that bothers Kisame. What does is the growing suspicion he has that he is still being manipulated too. 

_A world without lies. What exactly does that mean?_

“We should avoid the center if we can.” It won’t help them.

Shisui stops his packing. The skin beneath where his missing eye was twitches. 

Unfortunately Kisame is familiar with Shisui’s stubborn nature.

“Our mission is not to check on your cousin.”

“It’ll take me less than an hour. I need to know if he’s safe.” 

“Our mission is the jinchuriki.” 

“Look, you read the report. Someone summoned Susanoo during the battle. I want to check in on Itachi if I can.”

“Into the middle of a village that thinks you’re dead?”

“I’ll go alone if I have to. You can’t stop me.”

No, Kisame can’t. More accurately he won’t. He has little reason to and he understands Shisui’s desire to see his cousin. To make sure he is safe. Shisui’s plan is unlikely to jeopardize their mission anyway. 

Shisui tugs the corner of Kisame’s ear, just close enough for him to feel the gentle brush of hands against his secondary gills. It’s a touch Kisame allows because his partner is a tactile person, and not a threat in this manner. Such an intimate touch is instead, between them, a signal that the hostility of their words is not fully intended. 

Kisame trusts Shisui to be himself. To be dangerously loyal to the cousin he loves, and to his fury on Itachi’s behalf. To be honest, and only dishonest when it concerns Itachi. To be dangerous enough to rile Kisame’s blood, but to never betray him in secret.

The day Shisui betrays him, Kisame will see it coming. Ninja though they are, Shisui respects him enough not to stab him in the back. Kisame respects Shisui enough to believe him when he says that. 

Kisame catches Shisui’s hand and presses into his space. Matches Shisui’s grin. Even conviction for conviction.

Today is not that day. Going close to Konoha, maybe even into it, is something Shisui wants. It serves their interest.

And it may give Kisame the chance at answers to questions he doesn’t want to have.


	28. Politics

When Itachi is released from the hospital three days later, with strict orders to minimize his physical activity, he isn’t surprised to be summoned to Hokage Tower. 

“Elder Utatane. Elder Homura.” He kneels before the Sandaime’s advising council and feels an uncomfortable sense of deja vu. Though the last time he stood before them without the Sandaime present….

….despite Kakashi’s warnings, Shimura Danzo isn’t here. Itachi can allow himself a moment’s relief that he hasn’t wormed his way back into power just yet. Duplicitous bastard that he is, no doubt he is already working to convince these two, and others in Konoha’s hierarchy, that his imprisonment was unjust, and the actions that caused it were meant in the best interest of the village. 

That Sarutobi Hiruzen was too soft, and that is why he perished. 

How far will he go to minimize his participation in an attempted genocide, Itachi wonders? How much will the respect he earned before the Uchiha Coup offset the shame he faced after?

How long will it take for him to claim the massacre plan was a lie? 

Perhaps Itachi should start watching over his own shoulder more carefully. He is, after all, the primary witness against Danzo. And that man is perfectly capable of staging an ‘accident’ to his benefit. 

“Uchiha Itachi. It has come to our attention that you have activated a higher stage of your dojutsu, and yet this was never officially reported to the council.”

“The Sandaime was aware of my abilities,” Itachi tells them. “I was unaware the council required a reporting of every kekkai genkai advancement.”

Elder Utatane’s lip twists unpleasantly. “Require, no,” she admits. “But given your family’s history, you can see how we might have considered it a gesture of your loyalty to report such a change.”

“Is my loyalty in question, elder?”

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to, because Itachi already knows the answer.

Regardless of what he has done for the village, to these two, and to the man Kakashi tells him they are considering for Hokage, his loyalty will always be in question. 

Elder Homura breaks the tension of the moment. “Itachi, we recognize that a clan’s bloodline abilities are kept secret for the protection of the clan. We have no interest in asking you to reveal their secrets, even in your case.” Itachi can smell that lie like a corpse rotting in the sun. “But you understand our ability to utilize your skills to the best of our ability relies on knowing what they are.”

The most foolish thing is, Itachi would have told the Sandaime what he was capable of, had he asked. A man he trusted to protect the peace, to protect him, he would have told almost everything. But the Sandaime was an honorable man who believed in Itachi’s loyalty, and believed in working with the clans under his guidance. He didn’t fear them the way these two do. 

So he never asked. 

“When did you come into this skill?” Elder Utatane asks. 

Regardless of how he feels about it, Itachi does need these two to trust him. Enough, at least, that they will overlook him rather than scrutinize his every move as potential treason. He cannot continue as he has under their constant suspicion, especially if their influence holds over the next Hokage.

If Itachi has anything to say about it, that next Hokage will definitely not be Shimura Danzo. 

“As the Sandaime knew, I have had it since my cousin’s death five years ago. The abilities it grants me are powerful, but demanding.”

“So in your current condition, using them would be difficult.”

Itachi isn’t surprised that they know of his illness. Nor does he appreciate the reminder. “Yes, Elder.”

Is that all, he wonders? 

“Itachi, if there are others amongst the Uchiha who have such abilities, we would like you to report that to us,” Elder Homura tells him. Of course they would. “It would be unwise for such powerful individuals to go unnoticed.”

Suspicion again. So they’ve returned to this, have they? “I am only aware of one other Mangekyo user aside from myself.” He can tell them this. They think Shisui is dead still, and it is the truth. Perhaps a branch of trust between them will buy him some time outside of their attention. “My cousin Shisui.” Whose abilities they were fully aware of. 

“No others you know of?”

“The Uchiha have not trusted me with their secrets for years.” After the execution of so many of them, there was no telling who might have awakened it. 

Itachi enjoys the hint of frustration in Elder Utatane’s eyes over that reminder. Itachi is not the trusted turncoat he was when they last tried to use him for their games. Falling back on old habits is a dangerous thing; these two would be fools to forget that. 

“Is that all sir, ma’am?”

“We will summon you if there are further developments,” Elder Utatane informs him. 

Itachi rises. Bows. Turns to leave. 

“Uchiha Itachi.” Elder Homura summons Itachi’s attention one last time before he leaves to deal with the inevitable mess these two are creating in their desperation. Itachi doesn’t have the authority to question them, nor to influence them personally, but there is something he can do. Just not here.

“Yes, Elder?”

“We have reports that a pair of individuals matching the descriptions of the organization you have been tracking were seen in Kizu village this morning. As they are your current mission, I would like you to organize a team to investigate their movements.” 

Itachi feels his heart stutter. Naruto has just left the village., and if Kakashi is correct, so has his team. Their plan can’t be to….

“I will handle it personally, Elder.” Itachi bows. 

Illness be damned, he doesn’t have time to assemble a team.


	29. Breaking the Rules

Sasuke bites at his thumb as he hovers on the rooftops above Konoha’s outer streets. He knows what he is doing is stupid. Unfortunately, Jiraiya hasn’t given him much of a choice.

_“No, absolutely not.” The man’s bushy white hair makes him look somewhat like a bristling porcupine: about twice as large as he actually is._

_“Come on pervert, why not?” Naruto whines. “They’re my team! If you can teach me things, you can teach them too right?”_

_Exasperated, Jiraiya exclaims, “What makes you think calling me pervert will make me say yes?” He scowls, looking Sasuke and Sakura over, and Sasuke feels his temper rise. He hates this, feeling like he’s being judged at a glance, without any chance to prove his worth. Like all he is, is his family’s eyes and shame. “I agreed to take you, Naruto,” Jiraiya tells them. “Not your friends. This isn’t a genin daycare.”_

_“We’ll be fine,” Sakura insists. “We can protect ourselves. We just want to help.”_

_“You really think you can convince Tsunade to come back here?” Jiraiya laughs. “Me and this idiot are going to be bad enough.”_

_“Sir,” Sasuke grates out a semblance of politeness. “I need to come with you.” He bites his tongue, his pride, and swallows it back. For his brother’s sake. “There’s something I need to ask Tsunade-hime.”_

_“Everyone wants something from her, kid. What makes you think you’re any different?”_

Sasuke watches Naruto pace by at Jiraiya’s side with a subdued bounce in his step and thinks, _the fact that I’m not giving up._ Besides, like hell he’s going to go back and tell Kakashi they lied about leaving with him. 

If Tsunade really is the best chance his brother has, then he has to take it, no matter what. Even if Jiraiya tries to send him home, he’ll follow that asshole to the ends of the earth if it means saving his brother.

Saving his brother.

_When did that change?_

He has an unfortunate amount of time to think about it, as he trails in the shadows behind Naruto and his new teacher. Why, suddenly, after everything , is his mind consumed with this driving need to help his brother? Itachi is a traitor. He betrayed the clan; his actions led to their father’s death. 

He chose the village over them.

_Over me._

But seeing his brother in a hospital bed, as fragile as Sasuke has ever seen him. Knowing that he’s dying, suddenly….

_Did I really hate him, all this time? Or did I hate the idea that he betrayed me?_

If Itachi really never cared about him, really betrayed him, then why did he wait nearly every day outside the Academy just to watch Sasuke from afar? Why was he there to save Sasuke and his team when they most needed him? At the expense of his own health?

So much of it doesn’t add up. His mother’s story rings in his ears as his only answer. 

_“He hated us Sasuke. The village poisoned his mind against us, and he betrayed us for them. Perhaps if I noticed he was unhappy, if your father didn’t push him so hard….” There’s a sadness in her eyes that Sasuke wishes he could fix. “He told the Hokage of our plan, and then he stepped aside like a coward while the village picked us apart.”_

He needs to know more. He has never wanted it before this, but he needs his brother’s story. He can’t have that if his brother is dying, and worse….

….he just can’t stand by and watch his brother die. 

It doesn’t make sense, this reckless desire of his, but he cannot push it away. Rather than being buried by his anger, it grows like a cancer in his mind until it is all he can think about. 

So no matter what Jiraiya says, he’s going to find Senju Tsunade. He’s going to convince her, somehow, to come back to Konoha and heal his brother.

Then maybe he’ll get the answers he needs.


	30. Encounter

Every step Naruto takes away from his team feels like a lead weight clamping on his heels. 

When he asked Jiraiya to train him at first, he didn’t think it’d work. The guy’s strong. Strong enough to teach Naruto the kinds of things he can’t learn from Kakashi. Strong enough not to be scared of Naruto, and best of all he doesn’t seem to hate him just for existing. 

Naruto fingers his frog shaped wallet in his pocket and remembers the satisfaction of meeting Gamakichi. Of summoning the old Frog Boss and knowing that he has allies at his call that will have his back no matter what. It’s not just his team anymore. If they’re in trouble, then Naruto can protect them. He’s not helpless to.

But he is helpless to protect them from him. 

_“If I’m going to help you get control of the Kyuubi’s chakra, your friends can’t be there.”_

_Naruto protests. Of course he does. “They’re my team. I trust them.”_

_“But can you protect them if you go wild? If Kyuubi takes you over?”_

Naruto remembers Gaara, the monster lurking inside of him, driving him mad, and fears no. Now that he knows it’s there, he can feel the Kyuubi’s chakra edging against his. Angry, chaotic, waiting. He knows its strength, has seen its face, and he doesn’t want his friends hurt. 

_You can’t handle me, kid._

He doesn’t have a choice, that’s clear. He needs Jiraiya’s help if he’s going to learn to use the Kyuubi’s power. If he’s going to get stronger, be able to protect Konoha and his friends, then he needs to learn that. He has to get stronger.

So the next time Orochimaru or some asshole like him shows up, no one has to die. 

_“Hey, if it’s just the two of us, I’ll teach you something cool too.”_

A little part of Naruto can’t help but feel like he’s being bribed to go alone. Something cool huh? Well, okay he’s a little curious. Especially if it’s something strong, like Sasuke’s chidori. Sure he can summon toads now, but….

Naruto remembers watching Sasuke work on that and feeling a little jealous, especially when they do that stupid elemental test and Kakashi tells him, _“Sorry kid. Guess Sasuke’s lucky he’s got a chakra nature like mine.”_

Lucky, sure. 

Nah that probably is just luck. Maybe when he gets back he’ll get to take Sarutobi Asuma up on his ‘offer’ to help with wind natured jutsu. Until then he’ll have to stick to what he’s got and what Jiraiya can teach him. 

He can’t deny there’s an exhilarating little bit of pride he feels, knowing he’s going to get to learn something special too, so maybe Jiraiya’s bribe isn’t that bad.

He still feels like an ass leaving his team behind though.

“Hey, per-- Mr. Jiraiya.” He’s trying, kinda. He’s going to be stuck with this guy for awhile, so probably a good time to exnay on the nicknames. Even if he totally is a pervert. “Where’re we gonna start, finding this Tsunade person.”

Jiraiya shrugs. “Guess you’re going to get a crash course in ninja hunting while we’re at it. For her, we’ll start with the nearest gambling quarter and see.”

Gambling quarter? “So you’re a pervert, that Orochimaru guy’s a creep, and she’s a gambler? Are any of you normal?” Jiraiya looks at Naruto in a way that makes him instantly regret his poor word choices.

“I can always send you running home to your friends.”

“No, no.” Naruto waves his hands. Not good. He really really needs to do this. Plus Sasuke’ll kill him if he screws this up.

Itachi might die if he screws this up. 

That thought sobers him instantly. Itachi might die. 

He messes his hands through his own hair in frustration. “No, I’m good. Let’s do this.” He has to do this. Whatever it takes. He needs to learn to control Kyuubi’s power, he needs to help bring this Tsunade lady home so she can fix Itachi. He’s the only one who can. Alone, without his teammates beside him, he can’t let them down. 

He’s not going to let them down. 

“Hey, we’re staying here tonight.” Jiraiya thrusts his thumb towards a nearby hotel. Fine, okay. It’s not bad. Got baths, which crap, means Naruto's probably gonna have to keep an eye on the pervert so he doesn’t get them kicked out or something. That’d suck. 

Jiraiya steps out while Naruto’s rifling through their packs and checking their gear with a quick promise he’ll be back soon. “Don’t you go peeping!” Naruto shouts after him. The door swings shut and it’s just him. 

Naruto flops back on one of the beds. 

This is stupid. But he’s not the boss on this trip, even if he thinks they could keep going. He hates just waiting around.

There’s a sharp knock at the door. Annoyed, Naruto flips off the bed and scampers to it. Pulls it open without thinking, “Hey don’t you have a stupid key?”

A pair of unfamiliar figures loom down over him. One of them’s really, really tall. And blue. And has a really big sword.

The other looks weirdly familiar, even though Naruto’s pretty sure he’s never seen him before. 

“Hey kid. Hate to jump in on ya like this, but we’re gonna need you to come with us.”


	31. Confrontation

Sasuke rounds the corner of the hallway in time to see a gigantic man with blue skin pull Naruto out of the doorway of a room and promptly loses all conscious thought besides ‘Naruto is in danger’ and ‘these guys are hurting my teammate.’

“Hey! Let him go!”

The shorter of the pair hassling Naruto turns. Stares at him. Shit that… He looks like…

That’s not possible. Uchiha Shisui is dead. Really, really dead. 

It doesn’t matter, because he is hurting Sasuke’s friend. Sasuke doesn’t take the time to think. His hands fly through signs as he focuses his chakra to a single point in his left hand. Deafened by Chidori’s shriek, with eyes only for the impossible vision before him, Sasuke launches his foolish attack with Naruto’s safety his only conscious thought. He can deal with his cousin’s presence later when Naruto isn’t in danger, but he is not. letting. them. take. him. 

His cousin relaxes his stance, grins, waits for him like he shouldn’t, because Shisui is supposed to be fast as hell. Then suddenly a blur is between them. Hands catch Sasuke’s wrist and pull. He hears a snap, feels an instant of terrible pain before his hand is shoved into the wall. Chidori blows plaster shrapnel over them. That hand tugs him close, a body shields him from the debris, and then pushes him away.

His brother is standing in front of him, panting. Blood running down his jaw. His thin body a shield between Shisui and him. “Sasuke, you need to run.” 

Like hell he’s going anywhere. Naruto stares stunned, that blue guy’s hand a solid weight on his shoulder, and there’s no way Sasuke is leaving him behind. “Move Itachi!” Sasuke yells. 

Three things happen at once: 

-Itachi yells something unintelligible and tries to push him back. 

-Sasuke activates a second Chidori, burning chakra through his nerves with its force.

-Shisui vanishes. 

Sasuke is launched back, tumbling through the hallway’s rubble, the wind knocked out of him. When he has the chance to look up, he sees his brother clutching his chest, sliding to the floor, and Shisui kneeling in front of him. A hand on Itachi’s cheek. He drags his thumb through the blood on Itachi’s lip. 

Then burning eyes find Sasuke’s. “You ungrateful little shit.” Shisui blurs from his position, then he’s before Sasuke again, pulling him up by his throat. Sasuke gags, claws at Shisui’s hand. Chokes. “You don’t even know what he would do to protect you.” The raw anger in Shisui’s voice is devastating. This, his cousin, who laughed and played with him as a child. Who is supposed to be dead. This can’t be…

….Naruto….

“He was willing to kill everyone. Sacrifice everything. And you turn your hand against him. You…”

A wretched cough echoes through the hall. 

“Shisui,” Kisame calls. Confirms it. This… 

Sasuke’s vision is going, but he can see Shisui turn. Hear him curse. See his brother staggering to his feet, one bloody hand on the wall.

With knife-point edges in his scarlet eyes.

“Shit, Kisame grab him.” 

Shisui drops Sasuke into a heap on the dusty ground. Naruto yells. Struggles.

“I can’t let you take him,” Itachi bites out between gasps. 

“Mr. Itachi, you can’t fight us as you are.” Does the blue man know him too? 

“I will.”

“ _Kuchiyose: Gamaguchi Shibari._ ”

As Sasuke loses consciousness, he feels the floor bubble beneath him. Red flesh bursts from the walls. His brother stands between him and Shisui, who has moved to his partner’s side, and Naruto is just beyond his reach.

There is nothing he can do.


	32. Mission: Abort

Sideways does not begin to describe how their mission has gone. Kisame suspects he should have anticipated it. Infiltrating _Konoha_ is probably the most foolish thing they’ve done in pursuit of their ultimate goal. He knows why. Shisui didn’t keep his intentions from him. 

“ _Look, you read the report. Someone summoned Susanoo during the battle. I want to check in on Itachi if I can._ ” 

If they could pick up the Kyuubi’s vessel in the meantime, so be it. Kisame can’t really say he isn’t curious. Shisui’s cousin is a fascinating puzzle Kisame shouldn’t have time to care about. Since his partner does, that offers him the opportunity to. 

Itachi’s appearance during their mission is not unexpected. His condition though, is. His mysterious hunter is too pale. Kisame can smell the blood on him before he sees it.

Seeing him collapse behind the Sannin, when he appears, is painful. A strong young man fallen, helpless, like a broken doll. 

There’s no other choice. They can’t handle a confrontation with Jiraya, of all people. Even grabbing the Kyuubi kid is out of the question.

Shisui stews in silence as they flee. 

Kisame contemplates what to tell Madara about this. Is there anything worth telling him, other than they failed? Encountering one of the Sannin and choosing to turn away isn’t dishonorable. 

The omission feels like lying, and that bothers Kisame more than he likes. But he has been allowing his partner his obsession with his cousin for years without complaint. It’s so different, to watch that kind of loyalty from the sidelines, knowing he can never experience it himself. He aches for it, and some voyeuristic masochist inside of him cannot help but be drawn to Shisui’s madness. 

To his cousin’s desperation. 

To the tragedy of them. 

Perhaps it is because of that loyalty, and because Shisui has never hidden it from him, that he experiences it as a masterpiece performance of the life he has never been allowed. Even the Seven Swordsmen would and have betrayed each other upon an order. This pair, despite their differences, despite the conflict of their positions, never will. 

“Kisame, you know I trust you right?” 

“I know you’re foolish too.” And yet Kisame knows that in this one instance, perhaps he isn’t. Because Shisui has never betrayed or lied to him, like so many others have. Because he is once again freely offering Kisame his trust.

Because Kisame knows he cannot fully trust their leader. 

“Something’s wrong with Itachi. What did you see.”

Ah. He’d want to know. “He smells ill, Shisui.” 

Like tainted blood. Like something is rotting beneath his skin. 

Shisui holds up a needle wet with blood long enough for Kisame to see it. “We’re dropping by Orochimaru’s. I want this tested.” It smells like Itachi’s blood. 

“He’ll be in disarray, with his plan in Konoha failed.”

“Yeah.” Wicked, cracked glee colors Shisui’s voice. “But did you see what he’s done to Sasuke?” No, Kisame missed that. He was too far away, holding the Kyuubi brat still. “There’s a curse mark on Sasuke’s shoulder. I think it’s about time I reminded Orochimaru that my cousins are off limits.”

Fantastic. Kisame could use a good fight.


	33. Answers

The hospital light is blinding. Sasuke wakes to it, and immediately winces at the sting. 

“Sasuke, how do you feel?”

The voice he hears is not the smooth alto he is used to waking up to. Instead his brother’s deep baritone penetrates the haze of light-blind pain and otherwise drug-induced fuzziness. After his confrontation with his cousin and his cousin’s partner he should hurt everywhere. That he doesn’t suggests he’s on some pretty good painkillers.

Which means he’s in bad shape. Shit. 

In a rasping voice, he asks, “Is Naruto safe?”

He can hear his brother shift. “I wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t. Sir Jiraya rescued us.” Us. Even his brother. That says something about the shape they were in. His brother shouldn’t need rescuing from anyone. At the very least, Sasuke cannot feel ashamed of failing where his brother couldn’t succeed. Especially if Naruto really is safe. 

Sasuke cracks his eyes open slowly, adjusting to the hospital’s light. A gentle hand pushes his bangs out his face. His brother, when he comes into focus, looks pale. His cheeks are thinner than Sasuke remembers, as if the past few days have wasted him away. His eyes are clouded in that unfocused way a fever can cause. 

He looks terrible. Sasuke wants to tell him he shouldn’t have come. That he shouldn’t have interfered. That he could handle Shisui, because Itachi isn’t strong enough. He should be, but he isn’t. This stupid disease that’s eating away at him; how could he even find the strength to track them down? 

Instead: “Is he really alive?”

Itachi hesitates as if he is considering lying. No, resisting lying. His brother speaks falsehoods too smoothly for them to be so obvious. “He is.” 

“Didn’t--” Sasuke has always taken it as accepted fact that Uchiha Shisui died five years ago, either by his own hand or, unconfirmed but heavily believed by the Uchiha, at Itachi’s. That he was a loyal member of the clan who either really did decide he couldn’t go through with their father’s betrayal of Konoha, or that he discovered Itachi was spying on them and was silenced. His death is the one thing that has always lingered as a mystery in their story. Part of him could never believe that Shisui would betray them. That he would rather die than protect the clan. Part of him equally could never believe Itachi capable of raising his hand against his dearest friend. 

Maybe if he was someone else. Maybe if he’d never seen, even as a child, the way Itachi idolized their cousin. The impossible depth of emotion in his voice, his eyes, his heart when Shisui was near. The way he allowed Shisui liberties with himself that he would no other. He wouldn’t even allow their mother to play with his hair the way Shisui could. Brush it, yes, but never flick and tease. 

If Itachi could turn on Shisui, Sasuke believed he could turn on anyone. Believing that he did made it easier to accept that his brother could betray him as well. 

Indeed he can see that emotion in Itachi’s eyes now, that which haunted his steps for the weeks between Shisui’s death and the arrests. The executions. Grief, Sasuke recognizes at last. A depth of grief he has never experienced, and hopefully never will, for there are few people he could ever lose that would haunt him so. 

His brother. 

His mother.

His team.

Itachi reaches out to him, as if grasping for a lifeline. When Sasuke fails to reach back to him, too enraptured by his brother’s pain, his hand drops. Resignation floods that grief. “There is no reason to hide what happened that night from you anymore, is there.” 

What?

That night….

Answers. 

Sasuke reaches out with his good hand, the one that doesn’t feel like a million needles under his skin, takes his brother’s hand, and begs him, “Tell me.”

There is nothing he has ever wanted as much as answers. Answers his mother cannot or will not tell him. Answers no one else knows. Maybe the Sandaime did, but he’s dead. Maybe Kakashi knows some of it, but not enough and he won’t tell. Itachi has never offered this to him. No, Sasuke has never had the opportunity to hear it from him. He has never sought his brother out on this; he could only believe his brother would lie. 

Now though….

Itachi tells him a story. A tragedy. 

A nightmare. 

His brother’s personal nightmare. 

As he does, his brother’s eyes spin red. The pupils widen to knife-points, into that terrifying type of Sharingan Sasuke has never seen. Blood gathers like tears at the corners of his brother’s eyes. It’s horrifying. Unnatural. An undeniable measure of his brother’s pain.

Itachi wipes the blood away as if it is nothing. As if he has experienced it a thousand times. How could he, and not break, Sasuke wonders. “Shisui’s death did this to me,” Itachi tells him. “The Mangekyou Sharingan. Perhaps its most powerful form, but at a cost: a trauma so deep it can never be healed. Like the death of your dearest friend.” His brother rubs bloody fingers together, staring off into a distance Sasuke cannot see and cannot follow. “Perhaps that has always been the curse of our clan, that our greatest power comes from our grief. From our anger. From our darkest emotions. I wanted to end that, and so I turned to the Hokage for help, but then….”

“Then?” Sasuke prompts. His brother is too far away.

“The coup would have begun a war. Civil war would have risked the other nations picking us apart from the edges. A fourth world war. Stopping the coup was the only way to stop it.”

“You chose the village over our clan.”

Itachi doesn’t deny it. He never has denied that. But there are parts to his story that don’t make sense, now that Sasuke is calm enough, okay drugged enough, to listen without his personal anger overcoming his reason. “If this Danzo guy stole Shisui’s eye, why would you trust them? He was part of the Hokage’s inner circle, right?”

“Because I was foolish and desperate, and he offered me a way to stop our father and maintain our clan’s honor, and….” Itachi looks at him with those knife-sharp eyes. “To save you.”

_He was willing to kill everyone. Sacrifice everything. And you turn your hand against him. You…_

“What did he ask you to do?”

Itachi’s reply rings like a death knell in Sasuke’s ears. 

“You wouldn’t have….” No. That’s not… traitor doesn’t begin to cover what Itachi would have become. What Sasuke would have lost. What they all would have lost. Itachi’s reply describes the end of Sasuke’s world. 

Everyone.

“At the time,” Itachi replies, with a greater calm that Sasuke can imagine ever feeling in the face of such a terrible choice, “I didn’t believe I had another choice.”

To save Sasuke’s life at the expense of their entire clan. 

When the drugs wear off, he will have time to process this more clearly. He will have time to imagine the nightmare his life would have been, the desperation his brother must have felt to agree to such a terrible mission. He will have time to wonder what he would have done, given the same set of circumstances. To consider how dear Itachi held his life, that he would be willing to destroy it just to ensure his survival. 

It’s twisted. It’s sick. It’s…. Had Sasuke survived that, would he ever be the same?

“What stopped you?”

Itachi’s hand, loose until now, tightens in Sasuke’s. “The Sandaime Hokage learned of Danzo’s intentions. He sent your sensei to stop me before I could go through with it.” 

So Kakashi does know. Sasuke will ask him, when he has his next chance. He needs this story confirmed. Needs proof that Itachi’s words aren’t lies. If this is true then….

….his brother is a traitor, but not the traitor he thought he knew. 

A mild cough works its way from his brother’s throat. Sasuke squeezes his hand, and earns himself a soft smile behind that cough of the sort he never thought he’d see again. “You need to rest.” 

Itachi covers his mouth. The cough redoubles. His hand feels cold in Sasuke’s. “So do you,” he manages. He glances at Sasuke’s broken wrist, guilt deepening his eyes, but Sasuke doesn’t blame him for it. Maybe he would have under other circumstances but he knows Itachi was trying to protect him.

Despite everything between them. _You don’t even know what he would do to protect you._

Sasuke’s resolve hardens. “I’m going with them.” He sees the fear in his brother’s eyes, but just as Itachi was once desperate to save him, Sasuke, seeing his brother suffer like this, can think only of the same. “We’ll find her. If anyone can heal you then….”

A knock sounds at the door. It cracks open without Sasuke’s permission. At first Sasuke expects one of the medics, but of course there is one more person who would enter unannounced. 

His mother is not happy to see his brother by his bedside.

Nor, it seems, is Itachi comfortable seeing her. His hand goes rigid in Sasuke’s. His cough, which was softening, takes on a wheezy tone as he tries to swallow it back, but their mother doesn’t seem to notice. She moves to Sasuke’s side with a predator’s wariness in her step, watching Itachi with scarlet eyes. Under her gaze, Itachi bends. Once, Sasuke might have thought it was shame that folds him away, but now….

Their mother places herself between them, her hands carding through Sasuke’s hair. Her touch is a comfort, relief, a reminder that Itachi’s terrible tale has not come to pass. He still has her. The clan lives. Shamed, but they’re alive. He isn’t the broken shell of himself he might have been. “How are you Sasuke?” she asks, ignoring his brother for the moment it takes to press a kiss to his forehead. 

“Fine. Can’t feel anything.” 

For the briefest moment, Sasuke’s eyes meet Itachi’s, and before his brother can hide it, he sees that horrible flicker of pain in them.

Before Itachi gathers himself, and it fades into a mask. 

“Goodbye Sasuke.” 

There it is. That smile Sasuke has hated for half his lifetime. That lie in the curve of his brother’s lips, the arch of his eyelids hiding the pain he feels away. Itachi selfishly steals one last squeeze of Sasuke’s hand before he stands. He doesn’t allow himself to sway, rather, under their mother’s watchful gaze he pulls himself to his full height, every hint of his illness hidden beneath the shell of his too-pale skin. He bows to their mother formally. Doesn’t say anything to her. 

And leaves. 

Leaves Sasuke questioning everything he ever thought he knew about his brother. About his father’s death. About his mother’s story. His mother takes the seat Itachi left, gathering his hands in hers. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I’m fine mom.” 

Sasuke isn’t sure he’s fine.


	34. Are We a Team or Not?

Sakura shoves Sasuke into the hospital wall. “Why did you leave me behind?”

He doesn’t answer her immediately, which is a good sign, Sakura thinks, because her next thought is she should punch him. In the face. Hard. He deserves it, even if he’s injured. Being turned down by the Sannin is one thing. Being left behind while her teammate runs off after them only to be hospitalized for encountering a pair of deadly missing-nin?

Not okay. Not ever okay. She is not going to sit back in Konoha while her team is being hunted down by criminals! Who the hell are these Akatsuki guys anyway? Why are they after Naruto? (Of course she’s already bullied the story, and several apologies out of Naruto himself, but that does not excuse them leaving her behind. How was she supposed to explain this to Kakashi on her own?)

That’s the worst part. They left her behind. She knows she’s the weakest of them; it doesn’t make that hurt any less. How can she get better if she’s always trailing after them? 

The ever present fear in her, that her intelligence and her determination will never be enough to match what a boy with a clan dojutsu and an idiot with too much chakra can do, twists and builds doubtful crevices in her mind in the wake of this. Leaving her behind almost feels like proof that her fears are real. 

She can’t find a way to make her skills useful if she never has the opportunity to explore her options. She still believes her best chance is with her teammates’ help and support. 

Sasuke looks guiltily off to the side. Not at her, not like he has an answer for her. He doesn’t, she knows. Hell, shoving him aside, she knows why he did it. It’s about his brother again isn’t it?

When they first met Sakura thought Sasuke hated his brother, but now….

It’s a lot more complicated than that.

“I know you want to help your brother,” she tells him. Startles him. He looks at her wide-eyed as if it hasn’t occurred to him that someone else might notice. “But every time you run off on your own...” which he does, repeatedly, it seems. Always trying to do everything himself. “I can help Sasuke. Don’t shut me out.” 

Don’t shut us out. Remember, we’re a team. We’re at our best together. 

“He’s not going to take us with,” Sasuke tells her. Hopeless, he knocks his head back against the wall gently, closing his eyes. He doesn’t apologize to her, but Sakura doesn’t really expect him too. He’s too proud. But he talks to her. Accepts she’s here and wants to help. 

Accepts she can help. 

“Why not?” Sakura asks him. Looking around the hallway, she decides this isn’t the best place for this conversation. They’re in a hospital, so finding a free room isn’t easy, but there’s a visitor waiting room just down the hall that might be open. She pulls him into it; luckily it is. “Hey, look I’ve been researching Sir Jiraiya since you left. Did you know he taught the Yondaime?” He’s had a team before. They wouldn’t be his first. 

Sasuke scowls, though. “Think about what happened to him.”’

Oh. 

Sakura bites her lip. Unfortunately, Sasuke’s right. That might be a problem. 

“It’s not that.”

Naruto, when he slides into the room with them and closes the door behind him, looks unusually subdued. But there’s determination burning in his eyes. He looks towards the door, checks it’s closed again as if he’s not sure he closed it himself, and then turns to them. “There’s something I gotta tell you. Something I should’a told you awhile ago, but…” He swallows.

He’s nervous, Sakura realizes. Really nervous. 

Naruto is almost never nervous, not like this.

“It’s really big. Like… no one’s supposed to know big. The reason those Akatsuki guys wanted me, and that pervert wanted to take just me. I just…”

“Just say it Naruto,” Sasuke snaps, impatiently. 

Naruto winces. He looks away, shuffling his feet. “I just don’t want you guys to hate me too.”

Sakura swallows the building fear in her heart, pulls her boys down onto the couches in the room’s corner, and tells Naruto, “You can tell us. We’re your team right?”

He smiles, takes a breath… and they listen.


	35. How to Prioritize a Threat

“So Shisui’s alive huh?” 

Though there’s a light tone to Kakashi’s voice, Itachi senses the seriousness of his question. He understands what Shisui is to Itachi, and kindly refrains from making a joke of it. After all, there is a reason he too suffers the curse of the sharingan’s most powerful form, and it isn’t because he wanted it. 

Should he have told the Elders that, Itachi wonders? No. As Elder Homura said, though doesn’t believe, a clan’s abilities are their own secrets to guard, not trinkets to be aired out for an old man’s paranoia. 

There are a series of scrolls between them on Itachi’s bed. Mandatory bed rest, it seems, comes with the annoyance of frequent check ups by not only medic-nin, but also his Captain and his Captain’s friends, as well as the insistence that he really does need to stay in bed.

Running off to help his brother and fighting S-class missing nin? Not on the approved activities list. 

At least Kakashi was kind enough to bring him dango. Though he isn’t expressly authorized to see the information Itachi has at his disposal, he is a trusted friend, currently off duty due to his genin team galavanting off with one of the Sannin in an attempt to find another, potentially qualified option for Hokage, and his insight is useful. Analyzing the information Itachi has gathered on Akatsuki is a job Torture and Interrogation can do, but Itachi doesn’t feel the need to wait on their deliberations. 

He also does not feel the need to be subjected to their methods. Kakashi he is willing to talk to in depth, even regarding sensitive matters.

Sensitive matters, like the one he has just mentioned. “I have come to accept he is.” Admitting his doubt aloud, and that he no longer holds it, settles a lingering fear Itachi doesn’t realize he has. The fear that he is still under some hallucination, or has been tricked, but no. Now, having seen Shisui twice, feeling those familiar hands against his face.... the fact that he even survived their last encounter in his condition is proof enough. 

The fact that Itachi would willingly place himself between his brother and Shisui tells him he believes Shisui’s survival is real, no matter his conscious doubts. 

Kakashi props his cheek against his fist. “Uchiha Shisui. Not sure what’s more of a surprise: that he’s alive, or that he’s turned his back on Konoha. That’s a day I never thought I’d see.” 

“Me neither.” And it bothers Itachi that he has. The Shisui of his memory was indisputably loyal to the village and to peace. He was the one who made Itachi believe in peace, that it was achievable and worth every sacrifice. But he and Shisui are Uchiha, and thus they have their flaws.

They share their clan’s most fatal flaw, and because Itachi understands that, he understands Shisui’s betrayal of Konoha. Not of him, never of him. Uchiha love too deeply and too dangerously. For the sake of their most precious person….

His father always warned him his emotions were dangerous. 

“So their motives are still unclear. We know they’re interested in Naruto, or at least the kyuubi. Orochimaru was involved with them at some point…”

“But no longer is,” Itachi confirms. 

Kakashi nods absently. “Teams of two. If they’re all like Shisui and Hoshigaki Kisame then Akatsuki has the kind of firepower Orochimaru would dream of pitting against Konoha. Shisui… can he still use the Mangekyo?”

Itachi looks at him blandly. “To my knowledge it doesn’t exactly disappear.”

Kakashi meets his level stare. “You know what I mean.”

Of course he does. And no, he has no idea, but Kakashi raises a point. Any one of Akatsuki’s members, if they are as powerful as those he has encountered thus far, could devastate the village single handedly. Objectively Itachi knows he is one of Konoha’s greater assets. Kakashi too. There are few ninja in a class that can compete easily with them, and Akatsuki, it seems, is made entirely of such people. The lesser minions who may have joined them from Amegakure are immaterial and unimportant.

“Though I don’t have a full count, they can’t be a large organization then.” There just aren’t that many options. Perhaps they should be scanning the lists of S-class missing nin for possible associates. 

Itachi leans back against the bedframe, irritated by his own exhaustion as it creeps in on him. His doctor has refused to give him anything that would suppress the symptoms such as chakra pills to boost his energy, claiming they will only accelerate his decline. The medication he has been prescribed makes him drowsy instead; Itachi can’t help but feel that was a deliberate decision to keep him tractable. 

The doctor claims his illness is still relatively new, not so far gone that it should completely hamper his abilities if he pushes himself, not yet. He should be out seeking his cousin, learning more about Akatsuki, making sure his brother is--

“Need a nap?”

Itachi resists the childish urge to puff his cheek up at Kakashi. “I’m fine Captain.” 

He’s not. Kakashi doesn’t push, thankfully, but that is the unfortunate truth. He’s….

He’s scared. Difficult to admit though that is, his body’s betrayal frightens him. His helplessness frightens him. Languishing in Konoha while his beloved village, his precious people, are beset on all sides by monsters while he can do nothing?

“What are we going to do about the Council?”

Speaking of monsters lurking in the dark that Itachi has little desire to face again. “Are they still considering him?”

“There aren’t a lot of options, unfortunately.” 

There are more than Kakashi thinks. Kakashi could be an option himself, if he were to ever allow it, but Itachi knows something very real would have to change in his life before that could happen. Once Itachi held the childish dream of becoming the first Uchiha Hokage, but that possibility is gone. The Elders’ mistrust of his clan remains, and he is not fit for the role anyway. Most of the elite jounin in Konoha are Kakashi’s age, and none stand out as candidates. They need someone with the strength and dynamic personality to hold the village together so soon after a crisis, someone who makes her civilians feels safe, and her ninja feel secure in their leadership. If Sir Jiraiya can, in fact, find Senju Tsunade and bring her home, then her reputation alone makes her a more than acceptable candidate. 

Better, Itachi thinks, as the world’s greatest medic-nin, he can’t imagine she would advocate war. Though he has never met her, and such assumptions are dangerous illusions he shouldn’t waste his time on, he cannot think she would be worse than what the Council is already considering.

“Have you spoken to others on the matter?” Itachi asks Kakashi. He hasn’t had time himself to investigate his colleagues views. 

“There’re a few here and there that still think he was falsely accused.” Of course there are. Itachi would more than willingly stand character witness against him, uncomfortable though it would be. “You know, there’s still a bunch of former Root in ANBU. I can get Tenzo to ask around, but I don’t think they’re too fond of him.” 

“What would it take to force the Council’s hand?” Itachi wonders aloud, even as his own mind catalogues possibilities. A Hokage cannot rule over a population willing to actively resist him. Vocal dissent from Konoha’s most elite shinobi might be enough to keep the Council from recommending Danzo for the position. 

If the choice goes to a general election, Itachi cannot predict the outcome. Danzo is a clever man, a smooth talker, and he’s had five years to stew in his own failures, to plan his rise out of disgrace. He gathers his allies with reasonable-sounding arguments made of minutely twisted facts and surrounds himself with people so blindly devoted to him they would never question his actions. Taking Root out of his control may have devastated his base of power, but he could rebuild it.

They could challenge his physical capability to defend Konoha in a crisis, but Itachi suspects he would find a way to overcome such a challenge. 

Resolved, Itachi makes to pull himself out of bed.

Kakashi pushes him back into it easily. Itachi bites back a curse, sitting there restless and frustrated by his Captain’s silent admonishment. Kakashi scratched his scalp. “So, I’ll go talk to a few people. Start spreading the word. Sound about right?” 

A propaganda campaign amongst the Konoha elite to push the Council’s hand? Yes, that sounds about right. “If you need me as a witness….”

“Actually, might be better with you here.” Itachi frowns. Turns that frown on Kakashi, perplexed. Kakashi shrugs, and smiles at him. “See, any jounin or ANBU can access those files. If you’re just sitting here looking pretty and sad, it’ll tug on their heartless heartstrings ‘til they can’t look at Danzo without feeling guilty about you. They won’t be able to look at him without remembering what he tried to have you do.”

 _What I would have done_ , Itachi thinks. What he rightfully would have faced the village’s disgust for. Sometimes he thinks that Kakashi is too willing to forget that he agreed to Danzo’s mission.

“I don’t have any interest in being a poster for martyrdom.” 

Kakashi nudges his shoulder. “Even if it fucks Danzo’s chances?”

Well when put that way. Itachi supposes he can handle some degree of humiliation for the sake of making sure that man never sees the light of day again. Your pride is not worth the village’s safety, he reminds himself. Kakashi is right; reminding the sympathetic elite of Konoha that Danzo cannot be trusted to have the wellbeing of his subordinates in mind might sway enough of them. 

Danzo will use what he always uses: that every action of his is to protect Konoha, no matter the costs, and there is a small part of Itachi that understands. That thinks he may even have the right of it on some twisted level. The village must be defended; sometimes sacrifices are necessary for that. 

But Konoha is its people as much as it is their home. 

“Very well then,” Itachi agrees. “But I will be assisting you.” 

Kakashi grins like he wouldn’t expect any less.


	36. Inspiration

Traveling with Jiraiya is a frustrating combination of enlightening and insane. For one, Sakura has never been outside of Konoha. Everything she sees is new, every experience is a chance to learn, and she soaks up every detail like she might not ever get the chance again. When her teammates are training themselves to exhaustion, she’s collecting new tools, reading about new discoveries in medicine, technology, anything she can get her hands on.

She should be training like that too, she thinks. Sparring with her teammates, at least, has begun to make her stronger. The problem is their style of fighting doesn’t work for her. 

They’re all big flashy jutsu, speed, and in Naruto’s case, raw power. She doesn’t have the kind of chakra to blow on something like learning the Chidori or Naruto’s new toy. She understands the finer points of the Rasengan better than Naruto does, she’s pretty sure, but understanding and execution are too different things. It’s immensely complex, and yet actually quite simple.

She tries it a couple times. Even sends Naruto into a conniption when she manages a tiny spiral of chakra at her fingertip before he bursts his first balloon. The trouble is she would need just a lot more raw chakra to push into it if it were going to be of any use.

Especially if she has any hope of fighting after using it once. That tiny little spiral of hers nearly knocked her out.

Sasuke’s been remarkably cool about it actually. Especially considering Jiraiya hasn’t offered him much. New meditation practices to help focus his chakra better. The opportunity to spar with an opponent much stronger than he is. Ideas he can use to augment his existing skill set. Even some pointers on what Jiraiya knows about his clan’s abilities.

“You’re not at your best with brute strength,” Jiraiya tells him. “Sorry for you kid, but that’s just it.” He gets this far away look in his eyes when he talks to Sasuke sometimes. “If he wasn’t the way he is, my old teammate would’ve been a good teacher for you, for how to play your enemy smart.” 

Sasuke is speed and intelligence, lightning fast and accurate. Naruto is raw power and determination. Sakura….

She’s still figuring out what she is. It’s frustrating. 

It keeps her up at night, hating how with each passing day she is learning more, and yet she feels she is falling further and further behind. She realizes she doesn’t even know what she could be, because she’s never had a model to strive for. Sasuke has his clan’s elite, and Naruto has his dream of being Hokage. She wants to be a powerful kunoichi, but how many elite kunoichi does she even know?

It’s in moments like these she’s a little jealous of Hinata, because maybe her sensei could have helped. 

Finding Tsunade helps. 

Tsunade, who when they ask her to come back to Konoha with them, laughs. Tsunade, who when Jiraiya tries to sweet talk her, flips a table on him. Tsunade who leaves a crater in the ground with a flick of her finger. Who, when Orochimaru comes hunting for Sasuke again, with a nasty scar across his face, taunting him with “ _tell your cousin his message was declined_ ”, overcomes her greatest fears for the sake of protecting them and leaves him senseless. Who takes in Naruto’s determination, Sasuke’s desperation, and Sakura’s own frustration with her cynicism, and changes. 

Sakura thinks, _this is what I could be._

Suddenly the future looks a whole world brighter.


	37. A Long-awaited Visitor

“Wow, you really have messed yourself up, haven’t you.”

Itachi wakes to the feel of gentle hands brushing his hair back from his face. He should be startled by the voice that wakes him, but instead he is resigned to the inevitability of this moment.

Of course Shisui would sneak himself into Konoha to see him. Foolish, dangerous though that is, Itachi isn’t surprised by it. 

Itachi leans his head into Shisui’s touch and opens his eyes. “It was unintentional.”

Shisui smiles down at him, seated upon his bed in the moonlight that filters through Itachi’s window. He looks like a phantom; for a moment Itachi fears he is dreaming. Finding Shisui alive again is still too recent for him to easily believe what he sees. 

So he reaches out. Presses a finger to Shisui’s cheek beneath his ruined eye. Shisui lets him gently explore the scars, run his fingers over the gaunt hollow of his cheek and along his jaw, memorizing the now grown lines of his face in touch.

He has seen them with his sharingan. He will never forget Shisui’s face, but he wants to remember this too. 

“You never did tell me what happened to my other eye.”

No. Itachi knows, but only because Kakashi was the one to tell him. “Danzo destroyed it when he was arrested. Trying to hide the evidence that would convict him of your murder.”

“Since he didn’t actually kill me, they wouldn’t have gotten very far with that accusation.”

“They didn’t need to.”

“Yeah.” Shisui laughs. Clear and warm, like he used to. “You know, a little birdy told me you’re having to deal with that asshole again. Want me to handle him for you?”

Itachi hisses. “Shisui that’s--”

“What? I’m a missing-nin, and he’s the dick who gouged my eye out. Who’d convict me? Konoha still can’t even figure out if I’m alive or not.” 

That is the absolute last complication Itachi needs to deal with right now. The Elder Council is a pain, but perhaps they have underestimated Itachi’s determination that Danzo never be given the chance to ruin another life again. Between him, Kakashi, and several dozen other witnesses to Danzo’s actions five years ago, they have built a silent coalition against him that, though young, is far too powerful to be ignored. Not without causing a literal mutiny. Once, perhaps, Danzo had enough power, enough support, that he could have combated that, but Itachi will see to it that he never has the chance to build such again. 

Konoha’s jounin will never support his candidacy, or at least Itachi believes that.

Kakashi, in his support, has made him believe that. 

“I can handle Danzo, Shisui,” Itachi consoles his friend. “He has no power over me anymore.” No one will ever hold Itachi’s heart hostage like that again. No matter the cost. The consequences are too great.

Unbidden, Itachi’s illness tickles his throat. He coughs, hiding his weakness behind his hand. 

“Damn.” 

Itachi tries to tell Shisui he’s fine. It’s a minor fit, nothing more, but his body betrays him. As he sucks in air to speak, his cough redoubles and snowballs into a series of painful wheezes. It takes him nearly a minute to recover. 

Shisui presses a glass of water into his hand. Where did he--Did he just use his teleportation jutsu to get that? Itachi didn’t even notice. 

A hand presses against his back, stroking gently against his spine. Shisui leans close to him, wrapping him carefully in his arms as Itachi’s coughs subside. “I didn’t want to believe what Kisame said.”

“Kisame?”

“He could smell you were ill.” 

Shisui buries his face in Itachi’s shoulder. Itachi, at a loss, doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wants to savor this warmth, bask in it. Hold it close and never let it free. 

How long has it been since someone touched him like this?

“How bad?” Shisui asks him. 

“It’s….” Itachi’s first thought is to lie to him. 

“Shit. That bad huh?” 

Shisui knows him too well. There’s a warning in his eye as he looks up. No, Itachi can’t lie to him. No matter how much he wants to lessen the blow. 

No matter how much he wants to believe it isn’t real. 

But Itachi doesn’t have to say it for Shisui to understand. Too warm, too close, Shisui threads his fingers through Itachi’s hair with that devastating smile on his lips. Itachi can feel Shisui’s breath close, and he wonders why Shisui doesn’t just do what they both want.

Perhaps what Itachi has wanted him to do for years.

“You’re not contagious are you?”

….what?

Itachi laughs. Laughs that turn rapidly into short, painful coughs as Shisui drapes himself over him, his own laughter warm in Itachi’s ears. It’s worth the difficulty breathing to hear Shisui laugh like this, purely for joy, no matter the tragic circumstances causing it. It’s worth it to laugh with him. So much so that Itachi seizes the opportunity he has lost so many times, has wondered about and tried not to imagine for years, and kisses Shisui. 

Silences him.

When Shisui’s hands tighten in his hair, he fights the scratch in his throat so he doesn’t have to stop.

Shisui pulls away, his eye spinning scarlet, wonder in his gaze. “You are going to be the death of me,” he says, before he kisses Itachi again. 

Itachi doesn’t care. He already has been once.


	38. Enough

As Mikoto watches her youngest son leave in the care of a man she doesn’t trust, she thinks. 

_Kushina, you loved this village for the man who saved you from your darkness, but I…._

_This is too much._

Itachi’s sickly image will not leave her head. Her eldest son deserves such a karmic punishment. Stricken by disease, unable to protect the village he turned on his family for, she does not feel joy for his predicament. She is still his mother, no matter his betrayal, and thus she cannot hate him entirely. 

But she can feel his condition is just. 

There is no justice in the way his infection has spread. Not his bodily affliction, but the infection of his presence. Sasuke…. Mikoto knows why her youngest son has left, following his team after the Senju's pet Sannin. For his traitor brother. To try and save him from his fate. Has he too, finally, been ensnared by his brother’s lies?

By Konoha’s lies? 

_I’m losing him._

_I can’t lose him too._

She won’t lose him too. No matter the consequences. What more can this village take from her? 

_Fugaku I know you never wanted this but I cannot keep pretending. I cannot keep waiting while Konoha bleeds our people into nothing and steals the best of us away. Our family’s anger may be broken, but I still feel it in my bones. My eyes still burn with it. I can’t lie to myself any longer._

In her home, she moves for the attic, for chests left unattended, sealed from weather and tampering for too many years. She tosses aside the familiar flack vests within. Brushes a hand over the familiar blue seal on a shirtsleeve, thinks of the past, of everything she has lost, haunted by Sasuke’s distance and by the village’s talons closing around her. 

She has few options. All of them dangerous, all of them with consequences she has not yet dared, not so long as she has her son to protect, but now he is pulling further from her. Too far from her. How long until Itachi’s lies infect him fully? Until he begins to believe the village is worth his life? 

This village has only ever been a burden to those she loves. 

She pulls up her hair, checks her supplies, thinks of the scroll hidden deep in her most secret cache. _If it becomes too much, you know where to find me._

It has finally become too much. 

Mikoto takes one last moment and reaches for the photo on her dresser. Whispers, “This cursed village. They’ve taken everything from us, Kushina.”

Her husband.

Her son.

Her best friend. 

In the mirror above, her eyes bloom a five-petaled scarlet, turning gently in her anger. 

Konoha will not take Sasuke from her too.


	39. Containment

Kisame watches his partner pace in silence.

Under other circumstances he might be able to distract Shisui from his frustration. A game of cards, a conversation, other options. Shisui gets like this, sometimes, when he’s on edge. Unable to sit still with a sort of manic energy about him that even gets under Kisame’s skin if he lets it. 

He’s had some practice not letting it.

“Do we know anything else?” Shisui asks, pausing momentarily to grant Kisame his attention. To distract himself from his own distraction, more like. 

Unfortunately they don’t, so Kisame can only disappoint him. “Our intel on Konoha is limited. You know more about it than Madara does.” Because he foolishly went there himself. His partner is getting reckless. 

Shisui bites into his finger, suppressing a noise of pure fury. “It’s bad Kisame.” 

Yeah. Kisame closes his eyes and imagines his Hunter: graceful, sharp-eyed, and fast, with his effortless skill and fierce determination. A man like that shouldn’t be brought low by disease. He deserves to die in glory, or not at all. 

Shisui is at his side then, right in Kisame’s face as he opens his eyes, a maniac’s grin on his lips. “You’re kinda taken with my cousin aren’t you.” 

Well that isn’t a statement Kisame can refute. He hasn’t lied to Shisui by anything but necessary omission for years, why start now. “Your cousin is a very attractive man.”

“Good thing it’s you saying that, or I’d have to kill you.”

Kisame laughs. Shisui runs his thumb along Kisame’s jaw, rubbing his softer flesh against the rough skin. He doesn’t have to ask whether Kisame doubts him; they know each other too well. Kisame doesn’t. Not about Itachi. Not about _that_ Itachi. 

He dares to run his thumb over Kisame’s lip. Kisame bites it. Gently, for him. Hard enough for Shisui to feel the prick of his teeth, but not to break the skin. A warning, but not a serious one. Shisui is in no danger from him, no matter how recklessly he is acting. 

He should have considered that warning more seriously, for Madara has noticed his protegee’s behavior. He summons Kisame late, when Shisui is conveniently distracted, to an out-of-the-way part of Amegakure’s rooftops underneath the rising crescent moon. It’s a little dramatic, Kisame thinks, but Madara has always had a flare for that. 

Not for such behavior in other people.

“Keep Shisui away from his cousin.” 

Oh, so Madara has noticed that has he? That poses a complication Kisame isn’t sure he can solve. His Hunter is far too close to their target, and far too likely to show if Madara insists they continue their attempts to capture the kyuubi’s vessel, a point which Kisame bothers to remind him of, and which does not please Madara in the slightest. 

“He is one shinobi,” Kisame tries. If he and Shisui wanted to, he is relatively confident they could deal with Itachi, if only because Itachi is ill and reluctant to harm his cousin. Beyond the simple fact that he doubts he can keep Shisui away from Itachi without severely compromising the trust between them, he doesn’t really want to.

That would mean isolating himself as well, which he realizes he doesn’t want to do.

_You’re kinda taken with my cousin aren’t you._

With Itachi’s loyalty, and the faith he shares with Shisui, with someone Kisame trusts as much as he can trust anyone. Itachi is undeniably beautiful, but that isn’t what draws Kisame to him. 

“Uchiha Itachi is a nuisance,” Madara pronounces. “Under other circumstances, were he in our hands, he could have been an asset, but now he is nothing but a distraction.”

“Why haven’t you ordered us to kill him then?”

Despite Madara’s mask, Kisame can feel the anger directed at him in that scarlet stare. Anger that Kisame is daring to question him. Anger that he isn’t just blandly agreeing to this madness as he usually does. Anger that his plans are being disrupted by two young men’s attachment to each other and there’s little he can do about it. 

“A wielder of the Mangekyo Sharingan is vital to the plan.” A plan that has barely begun to come to fruition. 

“And that plan?” 

It took years of planning to establish Amegakure as a base. To recruit Nagato and Konan and secure their loyalty to Konoha’s destruction. They haven’t even fully completed their recruitment; there are two outstanding shinobi* they should be taking the time to bring into their ranks, rather than worrying about this mess. While Kisame understands the opportunity Madara wanted to take advantage of, attempting to take the kyuubi’s vessel early, they’re past that point now. 

Madara gives Kisame a vicious look. “Shisui’s ability is still necessary. Your mission, Kisame, is to keep him contained.” 

Of course it is. Kisame grins. “What do you want me to do if he resists?” 

Of course Madara reads that grin as Kisame’s willingness to fight his partner if necessary. Perhaps even as the pleasure he would take in doing so. In so many other cases he would be right.

“Restrain him by any means necessary.” 

Thus he is dismissed. Before Kisame takes his leave of Madara, he dares the question eating at him. “The Eye of the Moon. You’ve never told me how it will accomplish ending this world of lies.”

Madara scoffs at him. “It will Kisame. That’s all you need to know.” 

That is not an answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Deidara and Hidan are not yet part of Akatsuki. Because reasons. Fact is it’s really unclear when they joined and it’s plot convenient if they haven’t.


	40. A Reckless Way Out

“I don’t know. That’s the answer kid, I’m sorry.”

Sasuke sits stunned in Tsunade’s office, his mind a whirl of denials and pleas he cannot voice. After everything they went through to find her: chasing down weeks worth of rumors, wrestling Jiraya out of bathhouses, training hard enough to make him see double by noon….

….Facing Orochimaru in person, the same person who marked him, cursed him, goaded him. _Nearly killed his team_.

“ _You are mine, child. Tell your cousin his message was declined._ ” Sasuke shudders.

All of that to bring her back here so she can take the Hokage’s seat, and she tells him she doesn’t know? 

“It’s not a no.” Tsunade folds her hands in front of her. The Hokage’s hat sits on the corner of her desk, though she wears no other trappings of the position she has agreed to. Her imperious voice, her sharp eyes, are reminder enough of her authority. “He’s still in early stages. If he were further along, I’d say his chances were as good as none, but there’s a chance.”

“But you don’t know.”

“Do you want me to lie to you?”

No. Sasuke swallows. No, that would be worse. As much as this hurts to hear, at least she isn’t giving him false hope. 

Is there any other way?

Tsunade sighs, breaking Sasuke from his thoughts. “Either way, it seems I owe your brother some thanks. His actions seem to have smoothed out some of the wrinkles I was going to have to deal with taking this job.” She flicks her hat with her finger. “I’ll do what I can for him. I can promise you that.”

Sasuke leaves his meeting with her knowing that ‘what she can’ is better than almost anyone else. 

Almost.

Sakura catches him in the hallway. “Sasuke, did she tell you anything?” There’s a pair of scrolls in her arms. Sasuke catches enough of their labels to see they’re medical scrolls of some sort. 

“She took you on then?”

Sakura lights up like a spring blossom. “Just as an assistant for now. Kakashi recommended me even. She hasn’t agreed to train me yet, but I’ll get there.” She will, Sasuke knows. She won’t let Tsunade sleep until she gets the apprenticeship she wants. She’s finally figured out what she wants. Good for her. 

“She’s not sure.” Sasuke doesn’t owe her an answer, but she’s his team, so he gives her one anyway. She gives him a sympathetic smile in return. Holds her hand out to him and squeezes his when he takes it. 

“If anyone can help him, she can.”

If anyone can.

Sasuke rubs the curse mark on his shoulder. 

Thinks of that possessive voice creeping in his nightmares. Orochimaru wants him. He’s a scientist; Jiraiya spun enough reminiscing tales after their encounter for Sasuke to know that. Maybe…. 

If anyone can.

It’s a stupid idea, but if it’ll save Itachi then….


	41. Mission: Retrieval

Naruto’s pretty sure he should have seen this coming. Sasuke is pretty smart, in theory, but he’s also a colossal idiot.

This is not the first time he’s run off to deal with some stupid thing himself without waiting for backup. And no matter how much they didn’t get along before, it seems like anything involving Itachi makes Sasuke ten times as reckless as usual these days, but going after Orochimaru? Really?

At least he had the damn decency to leave a note! 

_There’s one more person who might be able to do something. I’ve got to try._

_Asshole, isn’t this what having a team’s all about?_

Naruto knows he’s being stupid too. He should tell Sakura, find Jiraiya, find Kakashi, just… probably anything other than what he’s currently doing, which is hauling his ass through the forest with not enough supplies and only barely an idea where Sasuke’s headed hoping he can catch him before he gets to far. 

If he’s fast he thinks he can drag Sasuke’s fool ass back to Konoha before anyone else notices what he’s done. The problem is, Sasuke is way the hell faster than he is.

But he’ll get tired faster. Naruto has to hope for that, that he can catch up while Sasuke slows. He can’t keep that pace forever.

 _I guess a bonus of chasing after Jiraiya is I know Sasuke way too well._

Running wild like he is, Naruto doesn’t expect to hear a rustle in the trees beside him. He doesn’t even hear the first rustle, barely notices until a dark shape appears along side him. 

“Naruto.”

“Holy hell.” Naruto loses his shit, trips, and tumbles halfway down a tree before he can catch himself. He pulls himself up again, finds Itachi crouching on a branch above him. 

“The hell are you doing here?”

“The same thing you are I suspect.” 

“How’d you find out so fast?”

Itachi gives him a look that Naruto reads as somewhere between _because I’m me_ , and _why are you even asking_.

That probably isn’t actually how Itachi intends it, but sometimes Naruto feels ridiculously stupid when he’s around. Now, though, really isn’t the time to worry about that. “Do you know how much time we’ve lost?” Itachi asks when Naruto joins him above. 

“Not sure. I left as soon as I found his note.” 

Itachi smiles softly. “That was foolish of you.” But in this case Naruto thinks it might be the kind of foolish Itachi appreciates. 

“Shouldn’t I be telling you to get back in bed or something?” Speaking of foolish. Itachi’s doing a little better, sure, but that doesn’t mean he should be out here running like this. 

Itachi’s gaze lowers. His expression schools into a mask of something still and serene and just… Naruto can’t read it. He’s not sure he’s supposed to. “This takes precedence.” 

So Naruto lets him run. He can’t force Itachi to go back. He’s pretty sure Itachi’s going to ignore anything he has to say about.. Well…

He’s pretty stupid when it comes to his brother too. Apparently it runs in the family. 

“You gonna make it?” Naruto asks, worried. Itachi still looks too pale. There’s an icy determination in him, steel in his eyes, and his face is as cold as the porcelain of his ANBU mask. If Naruto didn’t know any better, he’d say Itachi looks ready to kill someone. 

Like the illness eating his lungs means nothing to him. 

“I’ll be fine Naruto.”


	42. Fool's Errand

“Sasuke!”

An orange blur tackles Sasuke to the side and pushes him sideways off the tree he was balanced on. Grappling, snarling, he and Naruto plummet towards the forest floor. Sasuke twists, manages to break Naruto’s hold at the last minute and push off him, bouncing off a low-lying branch and back up into the safety of the trees. “Naruto what the hell?”

“No you what the hell!” Naruto is furious. Sasuke’s not surprised. He should be. But he left a note on purpose, and he doesn’t have time to waste on his idiot teammate. “What the hell are you doing running off? Who the hell are you--”

“She said she couldn’t help him Naruto. Now get out of my way.” Sasuke makes for another tree only to be cut off by a half-dozen or so of Naruto’s damn clones. He ducks one’s strike, punctures another with a kunai, summons a katon jutsu to clear a few more. 

He’s not really trying to hurt Naruto, but the idiot can handle this much. Indeed Naruto himself bursts from the trees above. Sasuke turns on his heel and Naruto misses him by a fraction, catches the branch beneath and flings himself back up. “Who, Sasuke? If there’s another way then let me help you!”

“I don’t have time! If you’re going to follow, follow, but just let me--”

“It’s that snake asshole isn’t it!”

Shit. 

Sasuke slides beneath a clone’s grasp and uses a loose vine to swing himself further ahead. 

“Dude he cursed you!” Naruto whips a set of shuriken at him. Aiming for his shirt, too, which is easy to avoid. He’s not really trying to hurt Sasuke either, just slow him down. 

“He’s a scientist. If he can do something then--”

“Will you wait just one damn minute!”

A minute. Sasuke thinks as he ducks a clone’s blow that okay, maybe he owes Naruto this. Naruto cares for his brother too, he’s trying to help. He’s an idiot and he’s in the way, but he’s never betrayed Sasuke. He’s only….

He lands on a branch and lets his hands drop to his sides. Stops and waits for Naruto to catch up with him. “Let’s go back Sasuke,” Naruto begs him. “Tsunade didn’t say there was no chance did she? Let her try.”

“I can’t let my brother die Naruto.” Sasuke squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to do this, but if it means getting past Naruto. If it means a chance to save his brother then…

Lightning gathers in his hand. The sharingan spin an angry scarlet whirl of desperation in his eyes as he stares down at his friend. As he takes in Naruto’s shock. 

“Sasuke….” Naruto’s hushed despair echoes through the trees. 

Sasuke grits his teeth. “Get out of my way Naruto. Please.” 

“Sasuke.”

That familiar, deep voice startles Sasuke still. His brother emerges from behind a nearby tree, calm, steady, as if he isn’t at all affected by the disease eating at him. His eyes bleed red, and there’s a stillness to him. A coldness that makes Sasuke shutter. 

Chidori’s chirping stills. Silences. “Brother?”

With a furious edge in his voice, his brother bites out, “If you intend to try and have Orochimaru help me, know before you try something so foolish that I would rather die than let that snake within arm’s length of me.”

He’s serious. Shit, Sasuke realizes, he’s really serious. Curse aside, is this Orochimaru really that bad? 

_He killed the Sandaime. He tried to destroy the village. He cursed you, tried to kill your team_. In his brother’s eyes Sasuke faces the dark mirror of his desperation. He fights it, tries to ignore it, because if it’s really a chance, if it could save Itachi then…

Itachi doesn’t want it. 

Sasuke is a fool. 

“Come back with us, Sasuke,” Naruto asks. “Let’s go back, and let Tsunade help Itachi.” Back… 

Sasuke bites his lip. Agreeing feels like a failure. 

“Is that what you want, brother?” he asks Itachi.

Itachi nods. 

Then… if that’s it then…. 

“Aww you don’t need to do that Sasuke. We came all this way to pick you up!”

The moment Sasuke realizes they’re surrounded, it’s too late.


	43. Beyond the Point of Pretense

“You realize Madara is going to notice if we keep following your cousin around.” 

Kisame wants to be angry with his partner. Especially when the response he receives is a nonchalant shrug and “Hey the kyuubi kid’s there too. We’re working, right?”

He should be angry. Shisui’s lies are getting increasingly worse. He’s all but giddy, running towards the explosive battle they can both sense ahead of them. If Madara thought controlling Shisui was going to be an easy affair, he’s a fool.

Shisui’s loyalty to Akatsuki ended with his meeting Itachi again. 

The problem isn’t Shisui’s loyalty, Kisame thinks. It’s his own. It’s that despite Madara’s warning, he isn’t making any real effort to stop Shisui from helping his cousin, nor from avoiding the task assigned to them. 

By any means necessary, huh? He has to be willing to take those means, and against Shisui for the sake of Madara’s nebulous promises?

He’s been betrayed before. The more reluctant Madara is to explain his plan, the deeper Kisame’s suspicion grows. 

There is smoke rising from the forest ahead of them. Coupled with the sense of Itachi’s chakra, he knows they’re running into a battle, but not against whom. “Shisui, when we reach them--”

“Do what you want,” Shisui yells back. “You know where I’ll be.”

They burst through fire and steam into a cratered field of bone. Kisame recognizes the power at play almost immediately; that kid used to follow Orochimaru around like a puppy. A very dangerous puppy. Well, he can complicate this terrain with ease, maybe even fish the kid out.

“ _Suiton: Dai Bakusui Shouha!_ ”

He’s pretty sure he can trust Itachi to get himself clear of the sudden, explosive rush of waves he pours into the battlefield. Water blankets the field of bones; Kisame feels for each chakra point within his sphere, running through the signs for his water prison technique to pull them free. One is already unconscious, no doubt the work of Itachi and his companions. He can feel the kyuubi kid struggling and captures him, pulling him up. 

_There._

Itachi is pulling himself on top of the water not a yard from Kisame’s position. He glares up at Kisame, soaked through, his scarlet eyes whirling, and states, “You’ve just complicated a very delicate plan.” 

“Now, now, Mr. Hunter. You looked like you could use some help.” 

Regardless of his irritation, Itachi is smiling beneath the fall of his wet hair. He stumbles to his feet and that he moves to Kisame’s side, well….

It’s kind of nice that he trusts Kisame has come as a friend, and not an enemy. “Shisui?”

“Get your hands off me!” 

That’s not Shisui, but the voice still sounds familiar. Shisui blurs to their side a moment later, holding a struggling and very wet Sasuke by his collar. When he drops him, Sasuke doesn’t sink. Good, a thirteen-year-old should be able to handle himself on water by now, Kisame thinks. Shisui grins at Itachi and points down at him. “You dropped something.” 

Sasuke scrambles to his feet and plants himself firmly between his cousin and his brother. “Stay the hell away from him.” 

“Sasuke.” Itachi places a hand on his brother’s shoulder. The boy bristles, but he bites back whatever else he intended to say. “Where is Naruto?” Itachi asks Kisame. 

About half a second later, one of Kisame’s water spheres spills Naruto out onto the surface of the water. Naruto coughs, shakes himself, and scrambles to his feet pointing. “You…”

“Relax kid, we’re not here to kidnap you this time.” 

This time. Kisame snorts. So much for Shisui’s pretense. 

“Well shit, didn’t expect you types here.” The creatures climbing out of the water around them are, in a word, monstrous. For someone who has earned that moniker, Kisame thinks he has a particular right to call them that. Children twisted by Orochimaru’s crazed experiments (who else would they be), they form around each other in a defensive ring, and it’s clear they recognize if not Kisame and Shisui personally, then the cloaks they wear. 

Which is good for them, because as Itachi and Shisui form up at Kisame’s sides, and as the kids behind them prepare themselves, Kisame’s pretty sure Orochimaru’s pets know they’re out classed. 

“Run back to your master kids,” Kisame taunts them. “If you want to live.”

“Tell that asshole Shisui says ‘hi’.” Shisui waves at them mockingly, _murderously. “And that I meant it.”_

“They don’t look that tough.” One of the pair with silvery hair nudges his pair, and what must be his brother snickers.

“Hey assholes.” The woman with them hisses them quiet. She shoulders a larger man over her back, hoisting him like it’s nothing, which in that form it might not be. 

The last of them, six armed, looks them over. “They’re Akatsuki dumbasses. We’re not dealing with them.” When one of the twins moves to protest, the woman punches him in the gut. “You.” the six-armed man points over Kisame’s shoulder, no doubt at Itachi’s little brother.

Who at a glance is out of breath, probably chakra drained, but is holding his own. “Tell that jerk I don’t want anything to do with him,” the boy yells back. 

“We’ll see.” Orochimaru’s pawns pull away, despite protests. It’s a lot less entertaining than Kisame hoped, but those kids weren’t likely to give him a real fight anyway. 

At his side, a soft cough escapes Itachi, swiftly covered by his hand. The smell of pestilence lingers on him, unnerving and unpleasant. Before Shisui can intervene, Kisame whips his own cloak off and settles it over Itachi’s thin shoulders. Wet as he is, it’s not the most useful gesture but it’ll help keep him warmer.

Itachi looks up at him, clear surprise in his scarlet eyes. He clutches the far too large garment to him and mutters, “Thank you.” Shisui nudges Kisame’s arm and looks up at him, his one eye slitted with a knowing glint in it. 

Naruto, brushing water out of his air, chirps, “Wait, what happened to the other--”

A volley of bone needles erupt from the water below. Kisame snarls, enraged by his own oversight. He knew that kid was down there, somewhere. Buried in his own bones. Waiting, and he foolishly ignored that.

Shisui flickers out of range in an instant. Itachi is nearly as fast; Sasuke tackles Naruto out of the way of another. “Sasuke!” He isn’t able to dodge all of them, though, and goes tumbling across the water, skidding like a flat stone, bone shards tearing through his shirt and side. Kisame can smell his blood, and knows in an instant his Hunter is about to do something terribly reckless. 

Bursting from the water below, Kimimaro rushes at Itachi, but he is not fast enough to catch Itachi off guard. “ _Tsukiyomi._ ” 

Kimimaro freezes. Itachi hits the water and stumbles. Shisui is at his side a moment later, pulling him up, and beyond them, Naruto is yelling something at Sasuke. Something that sounds suspiciously like “ _stop doing that_.”

“That sure as hell better be all of them,” Shisui yells at Kisame. 

Kisame pinches his nose and this time makes sure to check thoroughly before he assumes it is.


	44. An Enemy's Mercy

“You need to keep an eye on that kid.” Shisui catches Itachi’s arm and hauls it over his shoulder, supporting Itachi’s shaky frame. Itachi sags against him gratefully. His fingers feel numb, his left eye is blurry and bleeding, and his chest hurts too much for him to answer. So he nods instead, because he can’t speak properly. 

“Seriously. Our boss wants him. He wants all of them. Some plan to release all the biiju and put the great villages out of their misery for good. End the fighting by force. I don’t know all the details, but when I joined them he promised me Konoha would fall, and they wouldn’t be able to force you to do anything anymore.”

Konoha would fall? If Itachi could find his voice he would press his cousin. Push for more. He can feel the weight of Kisame’s gaze behind them and knows Shisui shouldn’t be telling him any of this. Shisui has to know he’ll report it, so why….

“Look, I know you’re fond of the kid, and I know you’re going to keep trying to protect him. I don’t want you and Sasuke in the middle of this.”

There’s no way Shisui can prevent that, if Madara truly means to take Naruto. Sasuke will continue to try to defend his friend. Itachi will follow, because he loves his brother and he cannot let him be hurt, not if he can stop it.

He cannot let Naruto, a child too often betrayed, with too few friends, be hurt either. 

He chances a glance at Naruto, following behind them, subdued with Sasuke unconscious over his shoulder. He refused to let Kisame carry him, even though Kisame certainly could with ease. He would hate knowing this, Itachi thinks. That he is putting his friends in danger just because of Madara’s desires. Shisui should be telling him this, not Itachi. 

“Don’t worry, we’ll get somewhere safe soon. Then we’ll get all three of you back to the village.” 

All three of them. If Madara wants Naruto this is a perfect chance to take him. Itachi doesn’t have the strength to stop them. 

He is helplessly at their mercy. 

That might be okay.


	45. Price

“Madara would kill you for what you’ve told him,” Kisame warns Shisui, as Itachi falls into a fitful slumber within the protection of their closest safehouse. “You’re putting yourself, and him, in danger.”

“From you?” Kisame knows he should be. Loyalty should move Kisame’s hand. Loyalty to Madara’s infinite world without lies. 

But what does that mean ‘without lies?’

How can he betray the loyalty he has witnessed here, between these two? Shisui has only ever been loyal to Itachi. Loyal to his belief that Konoha has ruined his cousin. But even that was a lie. Shisui’s love for Itachi is not. 

“No Shisui. Not from me.”

Madara is no fool. 

“Isn’t this why you were made my partner, so if I ever betrayed Akatsuki, he knew he had someone loyal enough to kill me?”

That stings, a barb in the depths of the scars Kisame has buried in his heart. Scars of the past, reminders of what he was. Reminders of what he has tried to move past. 

One can never escape their past. To Madara Kisame still is the Monster Hidden in the Mist. The man willing to kill his comrades for loyalty. Wasn’t losing Kirigakure enough of a price to free him from that? 

“I’m not going to kill you Shisui. If he learns of this, it won’t be from me.” 

“But you still won’t tell me the rest. You won’t give me what I need to warn them.”

“Shisui, loyalty is the only thing I have left.” 

“Then be loyal to me,” Shisui challenges him. 

Kisame looks to Itachi’s resting form, silent but for the soft breaths of his sleep behind them. His mysterious Hunter, laid low by disease before his time. His brother asleep beside him, hands clutched tight in Itachi’s shirt. The Kyuubi’s vessel, eyes closed against the wall as if he means to watch over them. 

How is it that he has come to care for this stranger? In their short time they have known each other as enemies, as reluctant partners, but never as allies, and yet his stalwart dedication to Shisui, to his brother, to his home, moves a broken piece of Kisame’s heart.

A piece he thought he lost when Mist betrayed him. 

Shisui lays a hand on his arm. “I will never betray him,” he warns. He speaks the truth. A real and honest truth that Kisame cannot say he has ever experienced. It….

He wants that. But the price….

He looks at Itachi, looks at himself, and thinks, _haven’t I paid enough?_

“Would you betray me?”

Shisui knows what he fears. He doesn’t know all of it, but he knows some of what Kisame has seen and suffered. He knows the pain of betrayal himself, and knows that Kisame, for once, needs to hear this aloud. “Only for him.”

He gives Kisame the truth. 

“Then I will tell you what I know.”


	46. Debrief

“...and they’re part of this Akatsuki group right. They want me, well they want the kyuubi, and that’s in me so I guess they want me. Sasuke’s cousin, that Shisui guy, he said they’re trying to get all of them like me, but they weren’t supposed to start doing that yet ‘cause they’re not ready. There’s some ‘Eye of the Moon’ plan, thing, or whatever but that blue guy doesn’t know all the details, only that it’s supposed to ‘end the lies of the world’ or something….” 

Naruto’s head runs miles in seconds, too fast for his mouth to catch up. None of it really makes sense to him; Sasuke or Itachi could probably piece it together better, but they’re both still in the hospital. Hell, Itachi’s in damn restraints in the hospital because Tsunade took one look at him and told the medics he’s not allowed to leave that bed until she says so. Naruto guesses she’s pretty serious about it, because the seals on his wrists look nasty. 

He heard her cursing something about him being better off unconscious so she can get him to sit still long enough to help him. Naruto’s pretty sure that won’t matter unless she gets Sasuke to sit still too. Probably both of them need to be in restraints. 

Tsunade listens through Naruto’s story, which is kind of nice. She interrupts a couple times, but not a lot. It feels good, like she cares what he’s saying, even though he knows he’s going too fast and doesn’t have everything straight. His mind’s too stuck elsewhere.

They want him. This is about him. The reason his friends have gotten hurt, the reason Itachi’s had to chase after these guys, whatever they’re planning. They want him because of the monster inside of him.

More people are going to get hurt because he can’t protect himself from ninja that powerful. 

That’s not okay. 

_Stupid fox, you know at least you could help me protect us from them so they don’t have to._

No one should be getting hurt because of him, not ever. What if these Akatsuki guys go after the whole village?

Tsunade rubs her forehead. “Well, at least we know more than we did.” Yeah, that’s true. That’s better than nothing right? 

“Do you know what’s wrong with Itachi yet?” Naruto asks, both to get them off the subject, and because he really wants to know. 

Tsunade grimaces. “He’s not going to like the talk we’re having when he wakes up, but maybe.” She folds her hands in front of her. “There are a couple experimental treatments I want to try, if he’s up for it.”

She’s got some ideas at least. 

“Get back to your teammates, Naruto.” There’s a fond smile on her lips when she dismisses him. “I expect you to help me keep those idiot brothers put.” 

“Yes ma’am!”


	47. Doctor's Orders

“I should slap you silly.” 

Itachi wakes to a rather pleasant admonishment. Pleasant, because Lady Tsunade is, in fact, refraining from following through with her threat, and a slap from her would be incredibly detrimental to Itachi’s already shaky health.

He opens his eyes slowly to the painful brightness of his hospital room. “I trust you can understand that my actions were necessary.” 

“I can trust that you two brothers are idiots, particularly when it comes to each other.” Tsunade huffs, hanging the clipboard containing his medical chart on its hook.

Without protest, Itachi allows her to examine him. He feels… it is difficult to say whether he feels worse this time than he did during his last hospital incarceration. His limbs tremble with minute shivers. His chest feels heavy but is not currently acutely painful. His throat is dry. 

“I dislike doing this Uchiha, but since you apparently cannot listen to a doctor’s order of bedrest, I am ordering you, as your Hokage, to remain within the village for the foreseeable future.”

That….Itachi flinches. Because her stethoscope is cold, he pretends, but that isn’t why. “If Orochimaru comes near Sasuke again….”

Tsunade meets his eyes with a level glare. “I will personally rip his spleen out. Assuming he still has one.” She pats his arm. “Don’t worry, Uchiha. Your little brother is a fool, but he isn’t going to face charges for what he did. You, however, owe me your report. You encountered this pair of Akatsuki members again?”

Itachi tells her everything. Everything of relevance. He keeps his own relief at his cousin’s sudden appearance, the strange flutter of warmth he felt at Kisame’s concern for his health, to himself. He allows himself to speculate aloud about the implications of their actions, but does not tell her his fears concerning them.

Why was Shisui so close, he wants to know? Why did they interfere? Akatsuki has no love for Konoha, so it must have been on Shisui’s whim. If Kisame is truly loyal to Akatsuki, why did he allow it? 

Were they meant to interfere, or did they go against orders to do so? If they did, what repercussions might they face? 

Why didn’t they try to take Naruto when they had the chance? Naruto…. “Uzumaki Naruto, is he safe as well?” He doesn’t know that for sure.

“Safe, in better shape than you and your brother of course. I might actually hit his head into a wall for running off like that. Especially with your targets after him. Fool child.” She sounds more fond than angry. 

“I believe the hospital staff would appreciate it if you refrained, ma’am,” Itachi tells her. “They would likely prefer their walls intact.” 

She swats at his head. “Brat.” Then she sobers. “Itachi, I’ve had a chance to do some research. There is a treatment I would like to try. Unfortunately it is experimental; there are risks.” 

“Tell me them,” Itachi requests. She does.


	48. Rearrangement

“Shisui, walk with me.” 

When Kisame hears Madara’s casual summons, his immediate thought is, _so this is it_. He can see it in the narrowed scarlet of Madara’s one, masked eye. Though he is a difficult man to read (a mask will do that), his tone is not. And the slippery invitation he gives sounds too similar to the night he informed Kisame that Yagura, his Mizukage, was only a puppet.

He watches Zetsu’s fronds fade into the concrete, a malicious smile in his mad eyes, and knows.

 _It’s a trap, Shisui_ , Kisame cannot tell him. Can’t, because Madara is watching him, testing him, waiting to see what Kisame will do.

He knows Kisame has realized his intentions. He is forcing Kisame to make a choice. “This concerns your partnership, Kisame. You may join us if you wish.”

An opportunity Kisame accepts. He follows.

Madara leads Shisui on a meandering trail through Amegakure’s lower streets. Through covered markets that drip the constant rain from their awnings, under pipe-lined walkways and across steel bridges framing water gardens and decorative ponds. Kisame has always liked that part of Amegakure’s infrastructure. This is a nation that appreciates water nearly as much as his own. 

That Madara delays the conversation Kisame knows is coming reveals his further intentions. He wants to put Shisui off balance, wants him curious and nervous. He wants Kisame to be his reminder that Shisui is ultimately under Madara’s power, not merely an ally but subordinate to him.

Bound to him. 

Shisui looks behind him and meets Kisame’s eyes in a glance, dark humor glittering in his gaze as if to say, _so this is it, huh?_

Kisame contemplates his few unpleasant options. 

_“Would you betray me?”_ he asked Shisui. Will he betray Shisui instead?

“I thought you might want to meet a new addition to our ranks.” Madara opens the door to a fourth story atrium that looks out onto a particularly magnificent and exquisitely maintained waterfall garden. Orchids bloom from the branches of a collection of ancient tree stumps as flowering vines sway overhead in the breeze. Upon the edge of one of the collection pools, a lovely woman sits running her hands under the water’s spray. 

She turns to them and smiles, scarlet plum-blossoms blooming in her eyes. 

“Ah, Aunt Mikoto. Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Shisui is nervous. Honestly so, Kisame can hear it in his voice. He doesn't recognize this woman, but Shisui’s tone…. This wouldn’t coincidentally be his Hunter’s mother now, would it? 

Her eyes narrow to deadly slits. Acidly, she spits, “I should have known a coward like you would be here.”

Shisui tries to laugh it off. Strained, he raises his hands and, “I was pretty close to dead you know. Didn’t really expect to end up here.”

“And yet you let us be humiliated anyway.”

“Definitely wasn’t conscious during that.” 

“Oh?” Madara’s sly voice interrupts. “But does she know that it was you who seduced her son to betray her?” 

The flower pattern in Uchiha Mikoto’s eyes turns menacingly. Shisui’s expression, his silent response, is one of horror. He looks at Madara like he’s mad, and Kisame knows that he is. Mad…. and calculating. 

Seduced? Kisame knows this is a lie. He knows Shisui’s story as Shisui knows it, and now as Itachi does. A sickening lump forms in Kisame’s throat. How many times is he going to watch this? Watch Madara toy with his pawns like this, manipulate them like pieces on a go board until they are exactly where he wants them.

How long is he going to be one of those pawns? He knows he is one. He is here as a piece in the game as much as Shisui is. As much as Uchiha Mikoto is. 

“What are you doing Madara?” Shisui asks, his voice flat.

“He is giving me the opportunity you have thrown away,” Mikoto answers for him. “To punish Konoha for what it has taken from us. You wanted that once, but once again it seems you betray what you have dedicated yourself to all for the sake of that man.” 

“He’s your son!”

“Itachi is no son of mine,” she snarls. “You stole him from me, with your lies. With Konoha’s lies. I suppose you’ve stolen each other now haven’t you? Are you loyal to nothing else?”

No, Kisame thinks. And Madara knew that. 

Shisui turns to Madara, plays his last gambit. “You need someone who can use the Mangekyo,” he reminds him. “For whatever your plan is, you still need me.” 

Madara counters. “You know better than that boy. Besides, wouldn’t I rather have someone with two eyes? Kisame.”

There it is, the order Kisame has been dreading. The order he cannot refuse; he can be no help to Shisui here, surrounded by two deadly foes and within easy reach of the rest of their order. This is why he is here, why Madara beckoned him to come. Because he is capable of taking Shisui alive. Because Madara needs to remind him of his place in this plan.

Once again he is forced, helpless to resist this order to betray his comrade, for the cost of resisting is too high. If he resists, Shisui will die, and then there is no chance for either of them. 

_I’m sorry._ He unsheathes Samehada, lets its wrappings spin free, and as Shisui stares at him, his teeth gritted in stubborn defiance and angry, disbelieving contempt, he draws Shisui’s chakra from him. 

Watches him stagger and fall to one knee.

“Don't worry Shisui,” Madara taunts, glancing at Mikoto. “Your interfering cousin will also be dealt with shortly.”

Very suddenly Shisui struggles. Tries to rise to his feet. His one eye spins, murderously falling upon Kisame. “There’s a special place in hell for those who betray their friends,” Shisui hisses at him. 

Kisame bares his teeth. “I earned that place long ago.”


	49. Where is Home?

Tsunade’s orders are one thing, but as far as Sasuke is concerned, making sure Itachi doesn’t move from his damn bed is a full time job. Hell, it should probably be a B-ranked mission on its own. Itachi is definitely a major threat, convalescing or not. He might look all peaceful there, reading through one of Kakashi’s novels, a collection of scrolls piled beside a notebook on the table next to him. His glasses have slid down his nose slightly.

He’s reading Kakashi’s books. There’s something wrong about that. Something Sasuke really doesn’t want to think about. 

“Since when do you wear glasses?” 

Itachi looks up as Sasuke enters the room, and gingerly picks that offending pair of spectacles off his nose, setting them aside. “I’ve needed them to read for at least a year,” he admits. 

That’s… Sasuke feels a cold chill run down his spine and resists shuddering. Uchiha rely on their eyes; it’s an integral part of them. The sharingan are what make them unique so….

Itachi pats the side of his bed, welcoming Sasuke to sit near him. “Unfortunately the Mangekyo Sharingan comes at an ongoing price.” Is that what it is? His eyes? “The more I use it, the more my sight deteriorates.” 

“Is there any way to stop it?”

Itachi shrugs. Looks thoughtful. “Perhaps if I had access to the Uchiha records I could tell you. I can only explain what I’ve learned through my own experience.” 

Though his brother doesn’t ask, Sasuke realizes that he could get him those records. For a moment he wonders if Itachi is asking because of that, if the dismissive acceptance in his voice is just an act, a way to get Sasuke to give him what he hasn’t had before: the secrets of the terrible gift he has awakened.

That he has lived with for five years. 

There are other things Sasuke wants to ask him though. “Why wouldn’t you let me help you?” Why chase after him, keep him from Orochimaru, from the possibility of help? Doesn’t Itachi care whether or not he dies?

“Orochimaru is a genius, but there would be a price for his help.” Itachi reaches out and gently, hesitantly, brushes a hand against Sasuke’s collar when Sasuke allows him to. Just over the curse that burns against his skin beneath its protective seals.

“I would have paid it.” 

“No Sasuke. You owe me nothing, least of all what Orochimaru would ask of you.” 

“But if it saved you!”

“I would rather take my chances with a woman who does not ask me to sacrifice your safety.”

Fine. Just…. Fine. Sasuke fidgets, looks away, hates this waiting and watching and wondering. Hates being helpless. “You should go home Sasuke,” Itachi tells him. “You’ve been here for days. Mother will worry.” 

“It’s fine.” 

“Sasuke.” Itachi’s patient admonishment makes Sasuke feel an uncomfortable weight upon his chest. 

The worst part is he knows Itachi is right. He should go home. He misses his mother, wants to see her, just… Itachi’s health has all but taken over his mind. He doesn’t want to leave yet, even though his brother is awake now and alert, and seems to be mending. He could be sleeping in the comfort of his own bed, enjoying his mother’s company, he _has_ taken the time to train with his team only because Naruto has all but hauled him to the training field twice, but....

“Let me get you dinner first,” he says. 

He stalls. 

Itachi looks at him pointedly; he knows what Sasuke is doing. “And then you will go home?”

“Yeah, I’ll go home.” 

His brother silently accepts; Sasuke takes his time pattering down to the nurses’ station. Sakura is there, following Tsunade’s assistant Shizune through her rounds. There are bruises under her eyes; she looks like she hasn’t slept, but at the same time she looks happy.

She looks busy, but she takes the time to wave at him when she sees him. 

Naruto is probably getting his ear twisted off by Jiraiya for running off. For the third day in a row. 

Sasuke collects his brother’s dinner from the nurses’ station when it arrives and at that point he can’t really keep pretending to waste time. Itachi’s right, he can’t keep hanging around here forever. There’s no real telling how long it’ll take Tsunade to find a cure, if she can, and even when she does it could take months for Itachi to heal. 

“Itachi, I’ve got dinn--”

Sasuke freezes in the doorway of his brother’s hospital room. The light is dark. Wind blows in from the window. Itachi’s book is crumpled on the floor, his scrolls knocked askew. Blood stains the sheets of his bed; the figure crouched over him raises her sword once more, ready to plunge it down. 

Sasuke’s eyes burn. “No!”

Without thinking he throws Itachi’s dinner aside and rushes that figure, tackles her through the window two stories down into the street below. She twists in his arms, curses under her breath and pushes him away. “Sasuke you--”

Sasuke picks himself up from the ground to face her. Recognizes her and feels, in the frozen moment when he meets her eyes, a wretched pulse of agony in his head. Behind his eyes. Behind him lights are flicking on, there are yells, screams, orders being shouted. He only has eyes for her.

“Mom,” his voice cracks. His eyes pulse white-hot. His cheeks feel wet. “ _Why?_ ”

Uchiha Mikoto stares at him. Her eyes glow with blooming plum petals. She holds out her hand, beckoning him, but all Sasuke can see is his brother’s blood. His mother’s hand on the sword that kills him. Everything...he’s just found his brother again, and this….

At his mother’s hand?

His mother… he hasn’t seen her in days and she…. This….

 _He betrayed both of us. BOTH OF US. Now… how? It was just us left._

“They’ve taken everything from us Sasuke,” she tells him. “Come with me. We can be free of Konoha together.” 

Sasuke doesn’t want to be free of Konoha. 

His own mother has just killed his brother. 

Rage overtakes the pain breaking his heart. Chidori activates in a scream, and in that instant he sees his mother’s eyes soften. Sees tears in her smile. “I’m sorry Sasuke.”

Then she is gone, and Chidori’s shrieks Sasuke’s pain in her absence.


	50. Dissatisfaction in Vengeance

It is pity, petty vengeance, and her own terrible sorrow at what she has done that drives Mikoto to seek Shisui out where he is, restrained in the confines of a master’s seal in the lowest depths of Pein’s tower. His cell is a junkyard architect’s dreamland: a cobbled together mishmash of piping and wire and riveted metal in every color, each carved with intricate patterns that reinforce the protective interior. Mikoto can feel the dampening effects of chakra seals, and the sheer power invested in every piece of script even outside its bars. This cage could entrap even the most dangerous shinobi in Akatsuki.

Shisui lays backwards on the hanging steel bed frame, his arms tucked behind his head, looking as if his cage is the least of his concerns. 

Once, Mikoto thinks, she loved this boy. Her young nephew, who befriended her son who had too few friends, who was not intimidated by Itachi’s intelligence, who she hoped might bring him out of his philosophical shell. In the end he was far too successful, and it is from there that her resentment grows. When she learned he was alive, her first thought was relief.

Hope.

One of her family whom she thought was dead was alive.

And in the end it was he who turned her eldest son against her. 

Shisui looks back at her. Despite having his chakra restrained, he still hears her, still reacts. Still smiles with that cursed gleeful smile of his, as if nothing could possibly be wrong. As if they are still family as they once were. As if he isn’t the reason she has lost everything.

She really has lost everything. 

It would have been better if he died, she thinks. Then she would never have to know the truth of him. She could remember the joyful boy she knew instead. 

“Come to say hi?”

There’s an edge to Shisui’s tone that belies the grin on his lips. He recognizes her resentment easily. 

“I thought you should be the first to know.” A part of her that wants vengeance upon him feels satisfaction in telling him this. Part of her just feels sad, that it has come to this between them. “Itachi is dead.” 

There are few things that could break Shisui’s jovial mask. News of her eldest son’s death, that is among the few. It happens slowly: a narrowing of Shisui’s eye, a soft consideration in his expression. He doesn’t believe her; it shows in the way his body shifts, in the careful, wary set of his shoulders as he sits up. 

“I will not bother toying with you, Shisui. It was by my hand.” 

The emotion that plays across his face. It’s….

Disbelief. Realization. Fear. Heartbreak. Rage.

Desolation. 

Every emotion she has felt in every combination. The entire pulse of her being at hearing of her best friend’s death. The echo of despair at witnessing her husband’s needless suicide, as he takes her involvement in their plans to his grave. The resolution: watching her youngest son be ensnared by the lies that have already destroyed her most precious people. 

The closure of ending their betrayer’s life. 

_Ending my son’s life_ , a tiny whisper in her broken heart reminds her. _Hurting my children, both of them. Sasuke…._

She can’t feel the pain of that anymore, but Shisui can. 

Shisui does. He launches himself towards the bars of his cage at her. The bars screech as he touches them, flashing a blinding white with their electrical seals. He screams with that shriek, rails at her, a measure of rage she has never seen from him. His one eye whirls a maddened wheel promising her death. So he did love Itachi, she thinks. So at least she sees that his seduction of her son was honest. 

He cannot touch her, and his rage beats him bloody as he tries to. She has her revenge in seeing him break as she has a thousand times.

“Unfortunately, Mikoto, I have some news to disappoint you.”

Madara appears at her side. Mikoto feels anxiety clench her chest tight. News? She is drawn from Shisui’s maddened despair by those words like a hook catching and dragging her in. 

_Damn this man_ , she thinks, _what is he…._

“The hell do you mean Madara?” Shisui swears.

“A boon for you, I suppose.” Behind his mask, Mikoto imagines the man is smiling. Gleeful in his power over them, to draw their attention to him. “It seems Uchiha Itachi survived your encounter with him.”

“That isn’t possible,” is Mikoto’s immediate reaction. Shisui’s is a soft, animal sound of desperation. 

“Are you sure?”

 _Yes…._ Mikoto hesitates. Forces herself to recall that night as it is burned in her mind. Forces herself to remember Itachi’s blood on her hands, Sasuke’s rage. 

...her son’s pain. She never wanted to hurt him. _I’ve done this for you, Sasuke. To give you the chance to be free of them. To save you from the lies Konoha is blinding you with._

But she cannot forget the spinning kaleidoscope in her son’s eyes; the undeniable proof of how she has hurt him. How she, in killing Itachi, has broken a piece of her youngest son’s heart that can never be repaired. 

_It is worth the sacrifice, worth his pain, to ensure he could never be captured by his brother’s lies. But if Itachi has survived…._

“He’s alive?” Shisui asks for her. 

“He is,” Madara confirms. “But don’t worry, with him alive we have an opportunity we would otherwise have missed.” What opportunity could that possibly be, Mikoto wonders? She has already done something she can never take back. If she must face Sasuke again, she isn’t sure she can stand against him, not when she knows what she has already done to him. 

_This was supposed to be finished with his death._

“You see,” Madara croons in that sly voice of his. “It seems your cousin is a close acquaintance of the kyuubi’s vessel.” Ah, yes of course Madara would find a way to use this to his advantage. To further his plans. Madara gestures towards Shisui. “And I think all of us present know how he cares for you. I think it is time we gave him an offer he cannot possibly refuse.”

Asking a traitor to betray again. Yes, Mikoto thinks, that would be a fitting conclusion. Perhaps she has failed to take Itachi’s life, but this karmic choice Madara will ask of him… that is an equally satisfying solution. 

\-------

From the shadows, Kisame watches Mikoto’s vengeance, Shisui’s pain, and Madara’s cruel games, and he thinks about his choices. 

What few are left to him. 

_My Hunter, it seems fate will bring us one last chance to meet afterall._


	51. Kaleidoscope

It was shock that kept him from defending himself.

That is what Itachi thinks when he wakes. How he justifies his injuries. Shock at seeing his mother’s face as the lights flickered and extinguished. Shock at the spinning petal-pattern of her sharingan. 

Not shock at the sword in her hands. It was his mother who, long ago, first helped him hold a sword. It has never been his prefered weapon, but it was always hers. That she wields it against him, even, isn’t a surprise to him. Part of Itachi has been waiting for her vengeance for half a decade. 

In the end, he hesitated to harm her, because despite everything she is still his mother. She did not. So Itachi lies with a stab wound through his throat that she never had the chance to twist, surviving through the lucky courtesy of half a dozen trauma medics his new Hokage has recently been whipping into shape and his brother’s timely interference. Had his mother had even half a second more to finish her mission, had the interruption not come from the one person she might have hesitated in front of, Itachi is certain he would be dead. 

He is not, which means he can be here to comfort his brother in his darkest moment: betrayed by the one person he still trusts with everything, having witnessed the death of….

Itachi could never have guessed his brother cared for him that much, but the evidence is indisputable. 

“Did it hurt this much for you?” 

“I can’t say,” Itachi tells him. He isn’t his brother. He can’t feel his brother’s pain as his own. “But I felt I had witnessed the end of the world.” 

“It isn’t going to go away is it?” Sasuke feels the bruised skin beneath his left eye. Bruised by the several sleepless nights he has woken from nightmares of Itachi’s near death. 

“No, I don’t think anything can diminish the trauma, once experienced.” 

His brother will have that nightmare for the rest of his life. That is what it takes, an event so emotionally destabilizing that it will haunt its victim for an eternity. Time might ease the nightmares. Might dim the lingering pain of loss, but that image will be burned into Sasuke’s mind forever, just as Shisui’s death is forever enshrined in Itachi’s. They cannot possibly forget it. 

“Have you spoken to your teammates?”

They are the only others Sasuke can confide in now. Them, and Kakashi, who has lingered nearby the last few days, unable to offer himself as Sasuke’s support simply because he doesn’t know how to. His own experience, the awakening of his mangekyo sharingan, is something he has never spoken to Itachi about, but he understands its pain.

He cares for Sasuke, but cannot reach him. 

Sasuke shakes his head rapidly. He reaches for Itachi; Itachi lets him take his hand, cling to it like the child Itachi remembers. “I can’t--”

“I can’t tell you what to do, or whether it would help,” Itachi encourages him. “But they care for you. I believe they would give what they can, if you did.” It is up to Sasuke to take that opportunity. 

Very quietly, Sasuke whispers, “What are we going to do?” 

Their mother has betrayed them. Betrayed Konoha. Whether or not she was working alone, Itachi knows they will face her again. He knows he won’t have the luxury of hesitating the next time they meet; he cannot afford to do so against another person who shares his eyes. He will not, under any circumstances, conduct any plan which forces Sasuke to confront her without his express desire. If they meet again as enemies then so be it.

But Sasuke will not be harmed by her again, no matter what her reasons are. 

\-------

“He’s not going to do it you know.” 

Kisame listens to his partner though the bars of his cell as Shisui stares down at the dinner Kisame has brought him, and he thinks that his partner sounds less confident than he would like. 

“You know him best. How far would he go to protect you, Shisui?”

Shisui glares at him from between the bars, his one eye a malevolent scarlet glow, and he does not answer.


	52. Helpless Hope

Itachi stretches in the cool afternoon air and finds that the Hokage’s treatments may have made some progress. Two weeks out of the hospital his chakra is still low, his throat still feels uncomfortable and the scar there is still an angry purple, but he doesn’t feel as if his lungs are burning through his ribs. His limbs feel weak with a lack of exercise but not shaky with fatigue. There is a nauseous discomfort that accompanies his medication, but that is ignorable, particularly if the treatment continues to improve his condition. 

He is authorized for routine training exercises; he feels every reason to take advantage. Lady Tsunade has told him that so long as he remains out of combat and doesn’t attempt any extremely draining jutsu he should be able to operate as normal. 

_“Really if you hadn’t forced yourself into that first episode with the chakra drain you were suffering, your symptoms might not have shown up for months yet. If you can keep from stressing yourself, and we nip this in the bud now, we might be able to get rid of it for good.”_

Itachi clings to that semi-confident optimism. After weeks of fearing his inevitable decline, it is a relief. It may be premature, perhaps, but Itachi sees no harm, so long as he maintains a realistic perspective of his options. 

Perhaps he will indeed see Shisui again, and Kisame. Once he has beaten this. Once he has the strength to seek them out again. He wants to, more than for the sake of his mission. He wants to see his beloved cousin smile again. Hear his laugh. He wants to see that wry grin on Kisame’s face, hear the tease in his voice as he chatters, spar with him. Spar with both of them. Feel that they are strong and present and….

It is too optimistic to hope that they would be his allies, isn’t it? That is a childish thought; Shisui might be, but Kisame is loyal to Akatsuki.

But…. 

“‘Tachi, what’cha doing here?”

Itachi turns on the ball of his feet, finishes his kata through, and finds Naruto with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, watching him. Itachi doesn’t see his team present, nor can he sense his brother’s chakra nearby. “Naruto?” 

He looks….

“Something is bothering you.”

Before him Naruto folds in on himself, his eloquently expressive body sagging with a weight Itachi realizes must be so heavy upon him that he cannot hold it at bay. This child. This brash, angry, lonely, _hopeful_ , child…. 

Itachi has never known how to handle another’s emotions well. Empathy does not come easily to him, not as an unconscious thought. It is in the conscious analysis of it that he finds his moral center, his desire to protect and to fight for peace. Naruto is all emotion; he flows through its peculiarities with an ease Itachi cannot follow, for it comes to him as instinct. He connects with people. Grips them. Pulls them in. 

Pulls Itachi in; he moves to this child in his need without that conscious thought and wraps his arms around him. Feels Naruto’s pain as he shivers under Itachi’s touch. “Tell me,” he asks the boy. Naruto is not the sort who can hold his pain within without it damaging him irreparably. 

“They want me.” The anguish in Naruto’s voice is palatable. “They want me, for whatever they’re planning, and _I can’t stop them._ ” 

“You’re a child Naruto. You’ll become stronger as you learn and grow, but you can’t expect….”

“ _You got hurt because they want me._ ”

A flare of powerful, malicious, burning chakra steals Itachi’s breath. Echoes the emotion in Naruto’s voice. 

And Itachi understands. Of course Naruto could never sit idly by while those he cares for are in danger. Especially not if he is the cause. 

So Itachi pulls away from him. Presses a hand upon Naruto’s head the way he used to, when Naruto was still a child in the Academy, and they barely knew each other. He’s grown so much in a year. “Naruto, Akatsuki is a dangerous enemy. Chances are they will come after you again, and they will try to harm you and your friends. So train, grow stronger, and fight for them. Just know that no matter what happens. No matter what Akatsuki does. None of this is your fault.” 

It seems like a helpless thread of support that Itachi offers in those words but, given the way Naruto smiles up at him: shaky but just a little more confident, perhaps that is what he needs to hear.

Itachi takes that smile with him when he returns home to his apartment at last, glad of his own shower, his own bed, his own space free of the constant watchful eye of Tsunade’s nurses. He’ll be under her eye soon enough; he is scheduled to meet with her in an hour. 

There is a letter tucked into his book upon his bedside table. That wasn’t there this morning. Itachi’s immediate instinct is to scan it with his sharingan, and to further inspect it for traps and seals. Then to check his window, where the wards have been untangled and left noticeably disarmed.

He finds nothing. 

When he opens the letter, he understands why.


	53. Ultimatum

The ultimatum Itachi finds on his bedside table is _enough_. 

It is a threat, undeniably. That it appears between an hour of training and one of Itachi’s appointments with the Hokage is meant to prove his powerlessness. His lack of options. Madara can reach him anywhere, including within his own home. Thus he can reach any of Itachi’s loved ones as easily. 

He has one of Itachi’s loved ones captured so easily. Has laid his life against another’s knowing Itachi would do anything in his power to save them. That he is vulnerable in his affection for Shisui, and that there is an advantage to be had there. 

That there is a darkness in Itachi’s heart that would destroy everything for the sake of his most precious people, no matter the cost. 

“ _Bring me the kyuubi’s vessel, and I will spare your cousin’s life_.”

Itachi reads the ultimatum given to him, and his heart hardens. 

_You have known me in my moment of desperation, Madara. You do not know me so well now._

He swore long ago he would never be made so vulnerable again. He is not thirteen and under the machinations of a madman. He can see the lines of consequence clearly. Shisui’s life in return for Naruto.

What Madara gains in Naruto. 

_You have hurt my brother, bewitched my mother, taken my cousin from me, would take a child under my protection._

Itachi’s anger has never burned hot. It is a quiet, insidious, calculating rage that warms him like a slow flame. Focuses him like a firelight in the distance. 

_I am going to destroy you_. 

And he is not going to do it alone.


	54. Mission: Rescue

Tsunade tosses Itachi’s request for assignment down on her desk with the heavy sigh of a woman with no good options available to her. It is a more positive reaction than Itachi expects, simply because she isn’t immediately denying him. To her credit, she understands the complexities of the situation well enough.

“If this wasn’t our best possible opportunity to remove a major and growing threat to Konoha with minimal casualties, I would deny this immediately.” She stares at the scroll like it personally offends her. 

“As you say, Hokage, we won’t have this opportunity again,” Itachi quietly prompts her. 

Yes this is personal. Itachi knows he is being swayed by emotion, that he is accepting a much greater risk than he would otherwise, but his logic is sound. His analysis of their options is sound. 

It is that logic that sways Tsunade to an impossible choice. “Regardless of the fact that you are asking me to send a genin team into an S-class battle. Regardless that you are asking me to commit several of our most elite jounin to help rescue a traitor, I need to know that you can handle leading this mission to its end.” 

“Ma’am?” Itachi asks. He doesn’t understand what she means by that. They have the opportunity to remove what may someday become Konoha’s greatest threat before it comes anywhere near that, and his plan is solid, so….

“Your illness.” 

“Ma’am, you yourself signed my release papers.” And his personnel request was very specific because of that. 

“Don’t be coy Itachi,” Tsunade warns him with a snarl. “You’re barely three weeks into your treatment. Yes you’re responding to it but don’t underestimate the effects of stressing yourself now. This mission could kill you.”

That risk is always present; Itachi sees no reason to further acknowledge it. 

“Worse,” Tsunade tells him, “even if you survive, the stress to your chakra might aggravate your illness beyond my skills.”

Ah. So that’s what she means. 

_If you want see your twentieth birthday, you’re going to have to retire_.

Itachi closes his eyes and thinks of a life without this endless fighting. Without his missions. Without the expectations of the life he has been prepared for. He does not know how to be anything but a ninja, but he could learn. If it meant that his most precious people were safe, he could accept such a consequence.

Even if it means he will no longer be able to protect them. 

That would be the most difficult thing to accept, but can he sacrifice his cousin now for a future potential that has not come to pass? If he chooses not to act now he will never have to face that choice later. 

He feels in the core of himself that there won’t be a later. 

No, this is too important. This is a chance to end the threat to all of his most precious people in one move. The end gambit to a chess match he hasn’t realized he’s been playing until Madara took his precious queen from him. Well if Madara wants to play this game, then so be it. Itachi may have lost a valuable piece, but he is not out of options yet. 

And he is most definitely not going to give up.

“I understand, Lady Tsunade,” Itachi tells his Hokage. The consequences, the risks, the potential benefits. 

“I thought you might say that.” Tsunade takes up the scroll before her and lays it out. Snatches up her stamp and signs it. She holds it tight as she hands it to Itachi for just long enough to fully grab his attention. “Bring them all back alive Uchiha. Yourself included. Even if you’re willing to risk your life, that doesn’t mean I want to lose one of my best jounin for this.”

Itachi can only promise her that he will do what he can.


	55. Exchange

The early morning mist on the border between Rain and Fire reminds Kisame of home. He has been thinking of home a lot recently, as his present life has begun to take on an undeniable parallel. Standing beside Madara like this, awaiting what he knows is an inevitable betrayal, he wonders how it is that every push he tries against this duplicitous world somehow backfires on him.

How he is once again trapped between loyalty to his superiors and loyalty to his comrades.

He knows his Hunter will come. Itachi loves his cousin too much not to. Equally he knows his Hunter will not come alone, not this time. He cares for the kyuubi’s vessel; he will not give him up so easily. Madara rightly expects deception, has prepared for it. Thus Kisame knows his Hunter is walking into a trap.

Madara does not intend to let him leave here alive. 

_Only for him_.

Thus Kisame is left with his impossible choice. Betray his Hunter, or betray the man who promised him an end to the betrayal. To the lies. To….

 _For a man who promises an end to the world’s lies, he does a great deal of it himself_.

His Hunter, when he appears, ghosts from the mists alone. He doesn’t look dressed for combat: his clothing is dark, non-descript, and he doesn’t have half the equipment visible that Kisame would expect for someone with a preference for shuriken jutsu expecting a fight. He looks tired; there are shadows under his eyes and his shoulder drops heavily beneath the kyuubi’s vessel’s weight. He appears to be breathing with some difficulty.

He looks as if he escaped Konoha late in the night, and had to fight his way free. 

Kisame knows better than to believe that. Itachi’s appearance is most likely as deliberate as the sharp, defiant glow of his scarlet eyes. 

“You came alone?”

Itachi casts his eyes aside. To the ally Kisame can sense hiding in the mist. Huh, perhaps Madara overestimated his resources.

“I did,” Itachi lies. He is gentle when he sets Naruto down. Reluctant; it looks real enough that Kisame would believe it were it not for that sense of an enemy presence in the mist. Or for the simple fact that he expects more. “Where is my cousin?”

Mikoto coalesces from the mist; her remarkable ability to merge herself with the natural forces around her makes it look as if she has simply appeared before them. Shisui forms with her, conscious, but carefully drained of his chakra.

“Hey Itachi,” he is able to say, tiredly. “Kinda not totally sad you came, but you really shouldn’t have come.” 

Itachi closes his eyes. Pain drawing his features, mapping his conflicted resolve over them. “You knew I would come, Shisui.” _You knew I had to come, that I couldn’t lose you again._ What Itachi doesn’t say is so clear in his expression that Kisame almost believes him. 

Is almost convinced by it. 

That figure in the mist shifts. 

“Give me the boy,” Madara demands of Itachi. “Give me the child and you can have your traitor cousin. He’s of no more use to me.” 

Itachi shifts. Hesitates. “How can I be sure you mean to trade in good faith?”

Madara nods to Mikoto. Who draws the sword at her back and levels it beneath Shisui’s chin. “He isn’t dead yet, Itachi,” she says smoothly, with an edge that suggests she’d like him to be. 

“Come, Itachi,” Madara goads him. “Let us trade.” 

Itachi does not answer. Instead he hefts his package over his shoulder and blurs to the center of the misted field between them. He lies Naruto unconscious on the ground. Kneels beside him and, with his head bowed, brushes a loose hair from the boy’s face. Grimaces and then blurs away again, not so fast that Kisame cannot follow him, but still quick. He places himself carefully and courteously out of range. “Release him,” he demands. 

“And how do we know that boy is, in fact, the actual vessel? He could be a clone.”

“See for yourself.” There are no barriers between Itachi and he child now. If Itachi has them under a genjutsu, the three sharingan users at Kisame’s side would have noticed by now. Beneath his mask, Kisame knows Madara’s sharingan allows him to read chakra signatures. Kisame can sense the malevolent energy of the kyuubi within from here. If it is a clone, it is an impossibly good one. Itachi, with the sharingan himself, is more than capable of keeping the beast subdued.

“Very well then.” Madara nods to Mikoto. 

Mikoto shoves Shisui forward, hard enough to send him to his knees for good measure, just so Itachi can see him stagger. Itachi’s hand twitches for his belt. He must have at least a couple weapons hidden on him, if not a full supply. 

Naruto’s figure sinks into the ground. A moment later Zetsu rises at Madara’s side, carrying the boy. Beneath his mask, Kisame imagines Madara must be congratulating himself on his victory. 

Bloodless, easy, without flaw. “Mikoto.” 

Until Mikoto fades into the mist and reappears at her nephew’s side, sword against his throat, and Kisame realizes that bloodless is not the intention. Of course Madara would not suffer a traitor to leave him whole. 

“Madara,” Itachi snarls. His eyes spin dangerously.

“You’re a foolish boy, Itachi. You should have seen this coming.” Madara pauses to savor the stricken fear on Itachi’s face. Kisame feels the figure hiding in the mist tense. Of course Itachi will recklessly try to save his cousin. 

In that moment of opportunity, Kisame weighs his loyalties, and chooses. Draws Samehada in a single fluid motion and levels it at Shisui. “If you would allow me, Madara. He has been my partner for some time after all.”

Mikoto laughs. “Of course.” She allows Kisame to switch places with her and fades back to Madara’s side, watching with satisfaction as Kisame turns against his former partner. 

“Guess I’ll be seeing you in hell,” Shisui’s eye burns into Kisame with his promise. 

Kisame grins at him. “I’ll meet you there.” 

And as his blade makes deadly contact, he pushes every ounce of chakra Shisui can handle through its razor spines. Shisui takes the hit and tumbles backwards and then is gone. Vanished in an instant, only to reappear at Itachi’s side a moment later. He flicks his cousin’s hair and says something that makes Itachi’s shoulders relax instantly. Makes him turn back to Madara, those expressive eyes of his gone sharp as if this has played out entirely as he expected. 

“Kisame what is the meaning of this?” Madara cries, turning on him. 

But Kisame has made his choice. “You are a liar, Madara,” he sneers. “A world you create couldn’t be made of anything else.”

“Traitor!” Mikoto launches herself at him, sword drawn. She is a formidable, fast opponent, but like her son she lacks the physical strength to make those hits count against Kisame’s larger blade. Kisame takes a momentary lapse in her guard to make for his partner, because he knows what is coming next. They are surrounded already. There is a chance they can recover Itachi’s young and still unconscious friend, but not if they are separated. 

“The boy?” Shisui is already asking Itachi when Kisame makes it to their sides. 

“Unimportant.” With such a callous dismissal. As if the boy means nothing to him, which can’t be true, Kisame thinks. Nor can Madara think that. 

“I still have the jinchuriki, Itachi,” Madara snarls. He yanks Naruto up by his limp arm. “You’re surrounded.” Indeed the mist shifts. Kisame pinpoints the chakra signatures of several of Akatsuki’s elite. Of course Madara summoned them for this. It’s overkill, but a cautiously necessary move. 

Kakuzu is to his left. He can’t sense Nagato or Konan, but he can feel Sasori’s chakra. He can never feel Zetsu’s, but he’s seen him. They’re outnumbered. 

“Actually.” 

There, the figure Kisame has sensed. “I did wonder when you would show yourself,” he mutters. 

Hatake Kakashi, Konoha’s famous Copy Ninja, appears at Madara’s side, a kunai at his throat. The boy at Madara’s side pops in a poof of smoke. 

“Shouldn’t your eye see through that, Uchiha Madara?” Itachi taunts him. The curl of his lips intends more cruel barbs. Then his eyes widen, the shuriken-blade pattern spinning slowly. “Shisui….”

“Yeah, I noticed. You can tease me for not figuring it out until now later.” 

“Care to explain?” Kisame asks. They are surrounded by rather difficult opponents. Now is really not the time for games. Kakashi holding Madara at a standstill will not last more than another second. 

“How did I miss it?” Itachi wonders aloud, still vague in his surprise.

Madara has frozen absolutely still under Kakashi’s blade. Too still. Itachi’s right, something is terribly off. He should be taunting them, cursing, furious.

Instead….

“Hatake Kakashi, fancy meeting you here,” he says. 

In a tone Kisame has never heard. 

In a tone clearly designed to throw precisely one person off their game. And that person is not Itachi.

Kakashi has Madara by the throat, an easy strike at point-blank range. He is legendary for his merciless executions of his missions. Kisame has never met him personally, but his reputation precedes him.

That legendary ninja hesitates, because of one man’s voice. Madara, of course, takes advantage. He spins on his heel and strikes, and Kakashi reacts, strikes to guard himself and clips the corner of Madara’s mask as he stumbles back.

Madara’s mask hits a stone as it falls. It shatters. Beside him, Shisui sucks in a breath. “Shit.” Even Mikoto reacts, backing away from the encounter. Kisame senses his former coworkers shifting, edging towards the conflict, but he too is distracted.

He has never seen Madara’s face. “Shisui?” he seeks answers, because his partner clearly recognizes the man beneath the mask. 

It is Itachi who answers, in a flat, passionless voice. “That is not Uchiha Madara. That is our cousin, Uchiha Obito.”

So everything Kisame thought he knew of Madara was indeed a lie. His betrayal settles firm in his mind, for once again he has been deceived. So he will choose the loyalty that has been proven to him over his former master’s lies. Kisame feels his former comrades move and warns his companions.

Uchiha Obito rises to his feet, half his face covered by one hand, and snarls: “Akatsuki, kill them.”


	56. War

When it comes down to it, the logistics of defeating an enemy that has surrounded you are no more complex than defeating them otherwise. One thing in particular is easily simplified by the conundrum: there is no time for stealth or hesitation, only brutal retaliatory force. 

Itachi does not always adhere to the philosophy that a good offense is the best defense, but in these particular circumstances he has no real time to consider his other options. Fortunately he does, now, have allies who are familiar with the shinobi who fade out of the mist around them. Kisame and Shisui’s vital intelligence is the difference between death and success.

“Kakuzu’s near immortal and really damn strong,” Shisui mutters in Itachi’s ear. “Smart too; we need him down fast. You’ve heard of Sasori of the Red Sand right?”

The Sunagakure puppet master who went rogue years ago. Itachi remembers his profile from the bingo book. With his monstrous tailed body, he stands out. 

“The third one, what of him?”

“Even I’ve never seen Zetsu engage an enemy,” Kisame admits. “He excels in spy work, but that’s all I know.” Itachi is incredibly grateful, knowing he interpreted the man’s indecision correctly. Testing the limits of Kisame’s loyalty in the face of his master’s betrayal was the one thing Itachi could not adequately plan for. 

In the seconds as they form up around each other, as Kakashi stands stunned by his cousin’s appearance, Itachi formulates a plan. “Kisame, engage Obito with whatever means you must to distract him and ensure Kakashi is unharmed. Kakashi will be dazed. Shisui, you and I will handle Kakuzu.” A sharp crow-call echoes through the mist.

“Sasori’s not just gonna sit there,” Shisui warns. 

Itachi smiles as he readies himself, and reminds him, “don’t you trust me cousin?” Shisui hesitates. Sighs like he knows he should have expected something like this. “On my mark.” 

Beside them, Kisame grins a toothy, malevolent grin. 

“Go.” 

Like machine cogs clicking, they spring into action, Shisui following Itachi’s lead as the pair of them launch themselves at Kakuzu with all of their considerable speed. Kisame floods the field behind them, an adequate distraction that disrupts Sasori’s reaction as well. 

Against an unusually powerful opponent, Itachi risks the chance that strength is, indeed, Kakuzu’s greatest asset. He risks the chance that he will not expect a coordinated attack from two substantially faster opponents. He risks the chance that he is unprepared for a genjutsu user of Itachi’s caliber.

There is no need to fight toe-to-toe with a stronger opponent when given other choices.

Behind them, Sasori snarls, furious, “How dare you ignore me!” Itachi can sense multiple chakra signatures lashing out in their direction, his infamous puppets no doubt.

“ _Konoha Senpu!_ ”

And then appreciates not for the last time that his Captain insisted on involving his best friend. He has rather perfect timing. 

Shisui laughs as he flashes behind Kakuzu. “How’d you keep him quiet?” 

Itachi’s eyes spin; they flank Kakuzu between them, Itachi in front, and Kakuzu scoffs, loosening his collar. He casts a disgusted glance over his shoulder at Shisui. “Speed isn’t going to save you, traitor.”

Itachi can see the infinitesimal hints of his movements, each flicker of his extremely unusual chakra hovering at a flash-point. 

“No problem.” Shisui waves at Kakuzu without a care. “‘s not gonna be me who needs saving.” He flicks a finger towards Itachi, redirecting Kakuzu’s attention exactly as Itachi needs him to. 

“That little thing? Shisui, I can break him without burning a heart.” 

“That little _thing_ , buddy, is one of the best genjutsu users alive.” 

By the time the slightest flicker of concern registers on Kakuzu’s face, Itachi has had him captured for nearly a minute’s worth of meaningless banter. Which is not so meaningless when it gives him the time to weave a genjutsu so intricate that Kakuzu, frozen as he is, cannot possibly break it before Shisui thrusts a kunai straight into his back.

Itachi feels his chakra shiver under his skin and takes stock: adequate, for now. Shisui flickers to his side, wiping his blade clean, a wicked smile on his lips. “Time to rescue my partner, cousin?”

Itachi looks over their opponent. “He isn’t dead.” 

“Nah, that much couldn’t kill old zombie-face. But between your genjutsu and that, it’ll keep him quiet long enough right?”

A salient point. “Then let’s rescue your partner.”


	57. Engagement

Kisame has some experience with sharingan users. He hasn’t spent several years with an Uchiha partner for nothing, but he learns rapidly that those who use its higher form are irritatingly unique in ability. 

His opening gambit, reforming the landscape to his benefit, is enough to break Kakashi from his shock, but it hardly slows their opponents down. 

Kakashi shakes his damp hair out, eyes Kisame as if he isn’t entirely sure whether he can trust him (which Kisame considers an intelligent suspicion), and hardens himself to the difficult battle ahead. Between Itachi’s comments and Kakashi’s demeanor, Kisame can deduce that this liar before them, this Uchiha Obito who has manipulated Kisame from the shadows for far too long, is someone that Kakashi personally knows. 

Is it personal enough to make him reckless, Kisame wonders, or magnificent?

“We could have ended this world of lies together, Kisame,” Uchiha Obito taunts from across the settled ocean Kisame has created. “Under the Eye of the Moon, none of this would be necessary.” 

But Kisame’s ears are closed to the words of this false prophet. This man who has deceived him too many times. “Unfortunately it is necessary now.” He glances at his potential ally. “Hatake Kakashi, if you need to step back, I am more than willing to kill this man for you.”

“No.” Kakashi pulls himself to his feet. He pushes his hitai-ate back and up his forehead, revealing the spinning wheel of his famous sharingan. “Sorry, Mr. Hoshigaki, but this one’s mine.” 

Kisame was hoping for that. It would be a pity for a warrior of Kakashi’s infamous caliber to falter now.

Their opponents leave them no more time to converse. Mikoto spills into the ocean beneath them; Obito vanishes in a disorienting twist of space. Irritatingly Kisame can sense that Mikoto has blended herself with the water, but cannot pinpoint her location precisely. It feels as if she has become his ocean herself, and her presence disrupts his grip on the water’s chakra; he cannot manipulate it as he usually can, but it does maintain its relative form. His sharks will have no effect on her, as she no longer has corporeal form herself.

Whether she must regain that to strike him, that he doesn’t know.

As he is considering his options, weighing the merits of draining the ocean’s chakra with Samehada, Mikoto reforms herself from the water behind him and strikes, fast, at least as fast as her son. Deadly-fast, were Kisame not expecting such a maneuver. He whips Samehada to the side to meet her strike, reaching for her chakra, and instead tears through a water clone only to find another striking for his kidney in its place. 

He bats them away like insects, but his strikes do little good. He cannot tell whether the forms he hits are clones or are actually her. 

Frustrated, Kisame stabs down into the water itself and pulls every hint of chakra he can find into his blade, draining the ocean in a matter of seconds. Clever Mikoto blends herself with the earth instead, which Kisame has no power over, and thus he is forced to continue his irritating game of whack-an-Uchiha with no notable end in sight. 

_We’ll see who tires first then, ma’am_. In the end, who ever slips first will be the one to die.


	58. Behind His Mask

Itachi remembers his cousin Obito only vaguely. He was very young at his death, remembers his funeral, and has seen images of him from their family’s shrine. Two things stand out in memory: that he was described as a cheerful child, and that he gave his life to protect his friends during the war. Thus Itachi cannot recognize the bitter, furious man before him from description. He equally cannot find himself surprised that Obito is alive. Perhaps before he learned of Shisui’s survival he might have doubted Obito’s, but it seems a number of his clansmen who were supposed to be dead are not.

By the time Itachi and Shisui are able to break themselves from subduing Kakuzu, a gambit that will hopefully allow them to subdue the rest before he breaks the genjutsu he is under and recovers, Kisame and Kakashi have already engaged his mother and Obito. 

Itachi observes his mother for a long enough moment to understand exactly how she managed to disappear as his brother described when she attempted to murder him, but it is Kakashi who needs their help the most. Perhaps in other circumstances he would not, but emotionally this is not a battle Kakashi can win, and Itachi will not see his friend dead by the hands of a man he thought he killed. 

Of course Itachi knows the story. He is in a unique position to understand that were he ever to fight Shisui like this, he would likely not survive it.

“ _Katon: Housenka Sumabeni._ ” Itachi aims his flame enhanced shuriken, summoned from patches beneath his sleeves, between the furious blows Kakashi and Obito trade over the draining ocean Kisame has created. It is enough of a disruption to pause their battle long enough for Itachi to join his friend. Shisui follows, wary. “Itachi I don’t have a clue what he can do,” he warns. 

Kakashi, his voice rough with emotion, quietly tells them, “I do.”

In a moment of sympathy, Itachi offers, “If you need to Captain, we can--”

“No. No I need to do this.” Needs to see that Obito is real, needs to understand the anger that drives him, the life he has led since their last encounter, needs to learn why the friend he loved and lost has become this vicious shell of himself. 

Needs to learn why he is alive. 

Obito stands before them, his one eye slitted with revulsion, with judgement. “Five years ago,” he speaks to Itachi, “If you’d had the resolve to end our clan as you should have, if you joined us then as you were supposed to….”

Shisui’s grip tightens on a kunai. Kakashi looks at Itachi, an edge of panic in his eyes. 

But Itachi feels none of their fear. This man’s games are meaningless. The past that could have been is gone. Perhaps in another life, Itachi might not have been saved from his own desperation. Perhaps he would have followed the man he thought was Madara, become one of Akatsuki, seen his cousin again. Perhaps he would know Kisame in a way he doesn’t yet but would like to, he realizes. As a man he could trust. 

Perhaps he would live knowing he had cost his brother everything, left him prey to the machinations of men with too much power and too little empathy. Left him without a family and only vengeance to protect him. 

It wouldn’t be worth it.

Itachi feels Shisui’s presence behind him. “You didn’t tell me that, cousin.” There’s an edge to his voice. “That you tried to _help_.” Shisui _did_ know Obito, Itachi remembers. There are still several years between them, but Shisui remembers Obito as he was. 

Itachi reaches for him. Finds his cousin’s arm and reminds him, “I was stopped.” None of Obito’s goading matters. He is trying to stall, throw them off balance because he already has Kakashi off balance, but even then he cannot fight all three of them. If he stalls for time there is a chance Kakuzu will break free of the genjutsu trapping him, or Sasori will defeat Maito Gai (unlikely), or Mikoto will manage the upperhand against Kisame. 

Kisame. “Shisui, Kisame--” 

“I don’t want to leave you here with him.”

Itachi shakes his head. “Go.” He and Kakashi can handle this. 

That Shisui only hesitates long enough for the confirmation reveals his concern for his partner. Good. “Captain…”

“Thanks Itachi,” Kakashi tells him. A flicker of a smile curves his eyes. Itachi matches his smile. There is nothing to thank him for. He owes Kakashi more than this. 

Obito falls into a guarded stance. There are no more words left saying between them.


	59. In Sortie

Unfortunately, Uchiha Mikoto’s stamina proves to be greater than anticipated. Kisame can feel himself just beginning to tire when his partner shows himself, flickering to his side in time to catch Mikoto phasing from the grass. 

Kisame pulls his swing, lets Shisui block her attack, and levels a blow at her head. Shisui, anticipating the strike, ducks just as Samehada comes an instant too close and catches his aunt by surprise. Samehada connects solidly with her throwing her across the plain and back into the mist, but Kisame can feel instant he snares her chakra and pulls it into himself. Shisui lines himself up at Kisame’s back as he has a thousand times.

Ready for the next attack, laughter on his lips, a wicked glint in his eyes. 

Despite Madara, Obito’s, machinations, nothing between them has changed. 

\-------

A thousand puppets are no match for Konoha’s Sublime Green Beast. Poison only counts on contact, and he is too fast, too controlled in his attacks, to be so easily cornered. The Sixth Gate opens in a whirlwind of grass and debris. Puppets move with the speed of butterflies on the wind, tortoises in the sand, slow and lumbering. Even the rapid strikes of Sasori’s puppet body are sluggish. 

In defense of his dearest friend, Maito Gai is a one-man army against thousands, and he tears Sasori’s puppets apart.

\-------

Still upon the field, blood streaming from his spine, Kakuzu’s hand twitches.


	60. World Play

Itachi and Kakashi are both fast. Obito, with his irritating Kamui, has both the speed and stamina to match them. Though Kakashi shares his old friend’s Mangekyo, Itachi knows his Captain’s chakra suffers a constant drain because of his sharingan, and thus he cannot use that ability as effectively. 

What stamina Itachi might have had is severely limited by the nature of his illness, and he knows what he risks if he presses too hard. 

That being said, Obito has severely underestimated his opponents' resolve. Both he and Kakashi know to anticipate his presence at any moment. When Obito pulls them into the sub-dimensional world within his eye, they may unleash their most destructive jutsu without concern for their surroundings. Itachi’s amaterasu drives Obito into a corner for Kakashi’s lightning cutter to strike. They are pulled back into the material world at the instant of that strike, and Itachi catches Obito in a minor genjutsu disruptive enough to similarly distract him. 

Obito phases from existence. His sword pierces Itachi’s clone, sundering his flock apart into a chorus of crow-calls. Kakashi is on him a split-second later; they are both pulled into the other world where Itachi cannot follow. So that he can only anticipate his opponent’s next appearance and worry for his Captain, who should not have to face his oldest friend’s ghost alone.

Itachi cannot protect him from this meeting. 

When they reappear he can shove Kakashi aside and take his place, thrust into a world he cannot escape from himself, but Obito reveals no more offensive abilities beyond his adequate taijutsu, and his repetitive use of his teleportation and irritating intangibility reveals his weakness. He cannot use both at once. All they require, then, is a targeted strike at the moment he vanishes. As Obito pulls away from this sub-dimensional space, Itachi summons a fireball and launches it at him, searing Obito’s skin as he teleports away. 

And _leaves him there_.

Removed from the battle, Itachi has a moment to rest and to evaluate his options. Kamui is not part of his mangekyo’s skill set. He trusts Kakashi to notice and pull him out eventually, but he cannot anticipate what is happening in the real world. Using amaterasu has strained his chakra, but not dangerously. One of his shuriken seals is empty. If he can snap Obito into tsukiyomi he can likely end this, but he has no idea how tsukiyomi will react with kamui, an oversight he means to have Kakashi help him test someday, if they are able. Both are space-time jutsu, one genjutsu, one physical, but….

No. He tries. Breaking out of a physical sub-dimension is not like breaking a genjutsu that pulls only the mind into a manipulatable space. He cannot use tsukiyomi to escape. 

Then Kakashi is there, pulling him into the real world again, and all Itachi’s plans are rewritten in an instant of circumstantial change. 

Kakashi pants beside him, his sharingan eye squeezed closed, bleeding. He’s tired. Neither he nor Itachi can afford to allow Obito to continue running circles around them. 

An explosion of chakra erupts across the field. Kakashi laughs wearily. “At least Gai’s doing better than us.” 

Sasori’s chakra winks out. Good. They’re about to have---

Before Itachi can appreciate Gai’s victory, the entire ground erupts in a mass of ink-black threads.


	61. Web of Chaos

Kakuzu’s awakening rewrites the landscape. Earth and stone shatter, the mist burns away, Itachi feels his genjutsu snap and staggers as a lash of its chakra whips back into him. Four enormous monsters climb from the ground, masked and brimming with powerful chakra. Obito laughs. “You should have killed him when you had the chance!”

Itachi feels Kisame and Shisui’s chakra flicker closer. Both reappear at his side in the same instant Gai lands beside them, crackling with emerald chakra. Mikoto, face bloody, rises from the earth beside Obito. She pauses only for a moment and then vanishes again at the same instant those monsters strike. Itachi turns, anticipates her approach, but is forced to dodge those entangling threads dragging his companions down. 

Kisame roars, ripping them apart with Samehada, his blade unleashed in a mass of wicked spines. Shisui flickers out of reach and summons an army of himself to maneuver through them. Gai simply tears them apart bare handed as Kakashi summons raikiri to the same end, but those monsters loom. Simmering with power, Itachi cannot ignore their presence. He sees a moment’s chance and takes it, leaping for the distorted winged creature and summoning amaterasu’s flames to burn it away.

“Itachi!” One of Kakuzu’s threads snags his ankle. Itachi senses his mother’s chakra behind him the moment he hears her voice, but he is trapped, he can’t turn to defend himself. He rushes the seals to substitute himself with one of his clones as Mikoto phases in in front of him and raises her sword. 

A blur of black and blue interrupts them. His mother’s blade clangs against a kunai. Mikoto leaps back, faced with what must be her worst nightmare. It is a nightmare Itachi can sympathize with, for if he were to face his little brother, blade drawn, his kaleidoscope eyes spinning, Itachi can think only the worst kind of resolve could ever force him to continue fighting. 

Sasuke plants himself between them, his shoulders quivering, unmindful of the battlefield’s chaos as Itachi’s allies strike Kakuzu’s mass of threads aside. “‘Tachi!” Then there’s Naruto, appearing to cut Itachi’s bonds away, and Sakura with him. In an instant the mass of threads shifts, convulses, turns towards them as two of Kakuzu’s masked monsters build an impossibly powerful strike between them. 

Mikoto sees it too, sees those threads move, launch themselves towards her youngest son. In a moment’s panic she throws her sword aside and phases into the air, reforming around Sasuke as Kakuzu strikes. 

As all of his masks strike. 

Itachi forces Naruto behind him and places himself in front of his family as Kakuzu’s jutsu obliterates the landscape around them.


	62. Orders aren't an Option

“Ah, it popped!” Naruto feels his clone’s memories rush through him, like flashes of dreams he replays in the earliest moments of waking, and quickly relays what he sees to his comrades before he forgets anything. That’s his job here: make sure his clone’s so good no one can tell it’s not him, even a sharingan user, and make sure everyone here’s got the intel it gathers the moment he gets it. From the moment Itachi proposed this crazy plan of his, he’s been practicing with Sasuke to make sure this’ll work. 

Sakura insists that since it’s a shadow clone, not a regular one, he didn’t really need the practice. It makes Naruto feel better that he did anyway. More importantly, Naruto’s pretty sure Sasuke needed something to work on. 

“Time to rescue my eternal rival then.” 

Maito Gai winks at them. Gathers himself up. This is it. The big fight. Everything’s ending here, that’s what Itachi’s got planned. They’re going to get the guys who keep hurting Naruto’s friends to get to him.

“Now remember my young shinobi, your mission?”

“Hold the line of retreat.” Sakura tugs on the short gloves she’s taken to wearing recently, a grim set to her lips. “Remember, I’m authorized to heal minor injuries and stabilize moderate ones. If you or our teacher get hurt worse than that….”

Maybe they will, but Naruto’s not going to think that way. “They won’t, Sakura. Kakashi’s really strong. So is Itachi.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sasuke’s lip twitch. Naruto clenches his fists. “We’ll keep this place safe,” he tells Gai. That’s their job, to make sure everyone has a safe place to return to. They can do this. 

“Then I will leave you youngsters to it!” Gai is gone in a whirl of leaves. 

Despite his optimism, Naruto feels his gut sink. Though they aren’t close to where the battle is supposed to happen, he can hear crashes in the distance. The leaves of the trees above rustle. A crow calls. 

That’s Gai’s cue isn’t it?

A loud crunch startles him. When he looks up he sees Sasuke wince and rub his hand. Turn away. Shit. 

Naruto pulls himself up and jogs after his friend. “Hey…” 

“Don’t, Naruto.” 

Sakura doesn’t follow. When Naruto looks back at her she has this grim look on her face, like she knows she can’t fix this and hates that, but she nods to him. Urges him on. Even though Sasuke’s turning away and…. “You know if I had a brother and I knew he was fighting my mom, I’d feel pretty shitty too.”

Sasuke whips around. That new sharingan of his spins angrily in his eyes. It’s kind of creepy. “How the hell would you know,” he bites out, and ouch okay that kinda hurts because he’s right, Naruto _can’t_ know, because he’s never had a brother or a mother that he remembers, so he doesn’t know what that’s like exactly. And he’s not Sasuke, so of course he doesn’t know how he feels, but….

….but….

...he knows what it feels like to know someone he cares about got hurt. He knows what it’s like when someone he trusts turns out to be a liar. He knows what it’s like to feel helpless and weak and stupid, because he can’t do anything about it. 

“Just… all I mean is, it’s okay to not be okay.”

Sasuke watches him, an angry bitterness in his eyes that Naruto thinks he’s seen before. Not just in Sasuke’s eyes, but in his own in the mirror after Mizuki got Iruka hurt, and after he found out about the monster inside him. After he found out other people wanted to hurt his friends just to get it. “I can’t stay here,” he says.

Naruto kinda gets that too. 

He doesn’t really want to stay here either. Orders are orders, but his teacher and his friend could be getting hurt right now and…. his teammate needs him. “So we don’t.” He glances back at Sakura, sees her watching them carefully. She has her medical supplies open like she’s checking them, but she’s not really. Naruto’s pretty sure they’re ready to go. “Our jobs to make sure everyone gets home safe right?” He grins at Sasuke. “So let’s do that.”

“Gai said to stay put,” Sasuke reminds him. “Our mission is to protect our team medic.” 

“Why can’t we do that and go too?”

Sasuke tilts his head, thoughtful. 

When Sakura paces up beside him, her medical pack over her shoulder and a determined look in her eye, Naruto knows he’s won. She grins at him. “I can’t be a medic if I’m not around anyone who needs healing.” 

See Naruto was pretty sure he was being the smart one here.


	63. A War of Monsters

To fight a monster sometimes requires a monster, and in defense of his loved ones, Itachi summons his. “ _Susanoo_.”

Scarlet light erupts around them. Flesh builds over bone, armor builds over flesh. Itachi’s feels Susanoo’s arsenal click into place. Susanoo’s chakra burns beneath Itachi’s skin, eating away at his chakra at an alarming rate. Kakuzu’s threads strike and bounce off that chakra. That jutsu hits, crackling against Susanoo’s armor, cracking chunks of it. Outside of Susanoo’s protective shell, Itachi fears his comrades will hesitate in their shock, but they do not.

Thankfully, they do not. They turn on Kakuzu as they should, four allies Itachi could never have hoped for in his youth, each battling Kakuzu’s terrible masks into oblivion. Kakuzu’s strength is incredible. Impossible. Enough that Itachi fears for his friends even as he watches them win. As their strength meets Kakuzu’s with magnificent skill. 

As Obito fades from the scene in the arms of that man with two faces. 

As Itachi’s strength fails him, and Susanoo brings him to his knees. 

“Brother!” Sasuke finds Itachi, pulls him up, panic in his whirling eyes. “Itachi let it go!” Their mother stands by, helpless. Her sword is buried in the ground beside her, crimson streaks bleeding down her face. Naruto finds Itachi’s other side and yells something unintelligible. Something that echoes Sasuke’s desperate cries to just “ _Stop!_ ” 

“Itachi, sir you have to stop!” Sakura insists. Her hands glow a soothing green against him. 

No. 

Not until they’re safe. 

Itachi reaches for Sasuke. Smiles at him, taps his forehead and tells him, “I’m sorry.” 

He can’t let go, not until he knows….


	64. Afterward: Unresolved

It takes Itachi nearly a year to recover. 

In the end, it is Sakura’s rudimentary medical training that saves him from a life standing by and waiting for his friends and family to return to him. Though Susanoo taxes his chakra to the brink, she is able to keep him stable until they can return him to Konoha, and to ninja better equipped to fight the vicious symptoms of the disease her efforts hold at bay. It is Kisame and Naruto who are able to maintain his chakra level as she works, ensure he has enough to fight his illness and survive. It is Shisui who is able to subdue his mother, and bring her alive if not whole back to Konoha to face the consequences of her actions. 

As hard as it is to know why, she will never be a threat to Konoha again. Kotoamatsukami is too powerful, even for her. 

It is Sasuke’s decision to tell her what they have done to her. Itachi can hardly fault him for it. Even though she is aware of the genjutsu subduing her, she can’t fight it anyway. It allows the pair of them, at least, some fractured peace. Though she is bound to protect Konoha, that does at least mean she is bound to protect her youngest son, who has become an ally of Konoha in every sense. It is not entirely a loss. 

“He’s back to that mask.” 

Kakashi hands Itachi a scroll. A rudimentary image of a one-eyed spiral mask stares back at him. Obito escaped their confrontation. Vanished into the ether, no doubt to piece together what scraps remain of his plans. Akatsuki is broken. Their Hokage has taken the time and care to reach out to Amegakure and begin the process of settling some of the enmity between them. Though Amegakure’s leader has not come forward officially, Itachi knows that he has accepted more than one such overture. Perhaps they are not at peace, but there is now some chance of building a peace between them before Rain’s anger threatens to ally with another such enemy.

Kisame says that Nagato, Amegakure’s secret leader, holds a personal grudge against Konoha for the death of a dear friend. There is nothing Konoha can do to ease that pain but offer what reconciliation he will accept. For Obito though… 

Kakashi’s visits to the memorial grow longer in the months after seeing him again. He doesn’t speak of his old friend. It isn’t mourning, it’s…. Itachi isn’t entirely sure what is worse for his captain: knowing Obito is alive and he never knew or knowing he has become a dangerous enemy. 

Thinking of Shisui, Itachi finds he can sympathize, and that is why he continues to assist Kakashi’s hunt. They will find Obito, somehow. He is a justifiable threat to Konoha as is, and beyond that, Itachi does not like watching his friend’s pain. 

He prays that in his desperation, Kakashi will not choose a dark road he cannot return from. 

He prays that if Kakashi does, he can stop him before it is too late. That he can repay the debt he owes him. 

In the two years since their confrontation with Obito, so much changes, but that he owes Kakashi his life does not. That he will assist his captain in this terrible mission of his does not. 

Until Obito is brought home, the threat he represents to Itachi’s loved ones remains.


	65. Afterward: A New Path

“Hey!” Naruto waves a letter at Jiraiya, bounding up the road towards him. “Just got a letter from Sakura! Sasuke’s meeting us in the next village.” 

Jiraiya eyes the tiny serpent that Sasuke sent ahead of him as it nudges against Naruto’s cheek and then poofs out of existence. He makes what actually is a pretty theatrical shudder these days, compared to the more honest wariness he used to display. “I’m not paying for dinner.”

 _“Where the hell did your friend learn to summon snakes?_ ” Naruto remembers him asking.

Naruto remembers not really caring, but he gets it, since that was Orochimaru’s thing, right? And Jiraiya’s got his reasons to get all creeped out. “ _He says they’re pretty smart. And really sneaky. And it’s not like it’s their fault Orochimaru’s a creep right?_ ”

Sasuke told him he ran into Orochimaru once several months ago too. Turns out his own snakes didn’t tell him they’d taken on a second master either. He was pretty pissed. Sasuke didn’t tell Naruto how they worked that out, but Naruto’s pretty sure there’s some crater somewhere left over from it, ‘cause Itachi’s been teaching his brother some tricks and… they’re pretty nasty.

Sasuke’s curse seal is gone too. That’s pretty telling. 

Despite Jiraiya’s protests, he does pay for dinner. Sasuke meets them in a tiny diner outside of the nearest town with news from home. His ANBU gear is packed away (yeah Naruto knows he’s not supposed to know but come on of course he does); he’s dressed like a civilian in a high collared shirt, and he’s even wearing that little clan charm Sakura had made for him last year for his birthday. This year’s chunin exams just ended, so he’s got a lot to tell. Sounds like the rest of Neji’s team made it this year, and Sakura, and Ino and her team too. Sakura filled in for Shikamaru since he earned it last time around. 

Naruto’s gunning for next year’s exams, just ‘cause he’s got a bit more to do out here, getting kyuubi to talk to him, but he’s not worried. He’ll catch up soon, no problem, and then he’ll have his whole team there cheering him on.

Sasuke can’t stay long of course. He’s on his way home from a mission; he shouldn’t really take the time to stop at all, but he does whenever Naruto’s nearby anyway. It’s not like Tsunade can say no to her most promising new ANBU. 

“Have you heard anything?” He asks quietly, as Naruto’s telling him goodbye. 

“Nah, nothing. Don’t worry Sasuke, I know he’s still out there. I’m being careful.” He’s getting stronger, keeping an eye out. Obito’s not gonna get him, not if he can help it. And he’s not gonna get Naruto’s friends hurt to get to him. 

That Sasuke trusts him, nods and believes him, that’s the best feeling Naruto could ask for. Especially because it’s Sasuke. This guy who’s been his rival, been his comrade, and been his friend through everything. Who’s lost a lot and found it again, and has let Naruto share a little of that too. Naruto’s not sure where he’d be without him, and he doesn’t want to think about that much. 

“Sakura told me to tell you that you’d better be home on time this year, or she’s,” he quotes, “‘Going to crack your face open.’” Naruto winces because that’s a really real possibility these days and he kinda likes his nose.

“I’ll be there, I’ll be there.” He waves his hands. Grins. “Promise.” 

“Sure idiot. I’ll hold you to that.”


	66. Afterward: After the Long Road

Kisame steps into his own apartment to his partners’ greetings, and feels a still unusual sense of satisfaction. He sees Itachi look up from his book where he’s lounging across the couch, his dark eyes framed by his glasses and a small smile on his lips. Shisui peaks around the corner from the kitchenette and waves a spatula at him. They haven’t let Itachi cook since they discovered his definition of doing so tastes pretty much exactly like the medicinal crap the hospital serves. 

They’re not sure he has tastebuds. He doesn’t burn water, but his simplistic form of ‘healthy’ is not anything Shisui’s keen on living on long term. Kisame, given the option, agrees.

Adjusting to a life in Konoha over the past two years, through Itachi’s recovery, has been difficult. Konoha isn’t Kirigakure. At every turn Kisame expects someone is watching him, that the other shoe is going to drop and there’ll be a knife in his back or one of Kiri’s hunters will show themselves to earn the bounty on his head. 

As it turns out, Konoha’s Hokage has spent far more time than he could have expected smoothing relations with Kirigakure over his presence. His status as a missing nin and that he was part of an attempt on the former Mizukage’s life aside, the Land of Water was not pleased to learn the last heir to the Hoshigaki clan has taken up residence in a rival nation. 

And yet, Lady Tsunade has all but earned him amnesty, so long as he is never found participating in missions within Water. A favor to Itachi, apparently. As she says, “I owe that brat one. Might as well be this.” His name is no longer listed in the bingo book as a missing nin. His Konoha hitai-ate feels heavy with the weight of what it means, and the shine of it is finish still gleams a reminder of the chance he now has at a life beyond the cutthroat realities of the open road. 

He keeps his slashed through Kirigakure hitai-ate anyway. 

As hard as the transition is for him, Shisui feels the weight of their new life as keenly. He spent five years hating this village he now lives in again all because he believed his most precious person was hurt by it. For him, reuniting with his estranged family is a grueling battle of wills. Like Itachi, he is a traitor to many and a coward to others. 

But in this battle of wills and lives, none of them are alone. That, in itself, in the hope they have for a future free of the lonely weight of duty and loyalty to a cause they can’t believe in, is enough. 

Kisame joins Itachi on the couch with his own novel, leaning over to kiss the man gently as he settles in, and as Itachi tilts his head up in silent request. He props Itachi’s feet on his lap and feels Shisui’s hands stroke through his hair. Watches Shisui lean over and flick Itachi’s ponytail before he vaults over the couch and very deliberately flops himself between them. They have to rearrange Itachi’s legs all over again, which he allows with false resignation. Together they enjoy each other’s company, the opportunity of each other’s presence. 

And they just… try to work it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End. :)


End file.
